


Trouble

by stardustsroses



Category: Six of Crows Series - Leigh Bardugo
Genre: F/M, Kanej angst, Kanej fluff, a lot of cliffhangers, a lot of touching and a lot of fluffiness, also some mild mentions of rape, have i said a lot of angst, i can't help it soz, slow burn but not really, ultra angst really, yeah a lot of that too
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-15
Updated: 2019-01-10
Packaged: 2019-06-11 02:26:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 31,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15305394
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stardustsroses/pseuds/stardustsroses
Summary: Kaz Brekker, self-proclaimed King of the Barrel, has lost his Wraith Queen to the sea. Or at least that is the rumor that dances around in the dirty cobbled streets of Ketterdam. And word is that she is not answering to any of his letters and does not plan to come back.And then one day - she does.But it is clear that Dirtyhands has become sloppy. Careless. Inattentive. Easy prey. And enemies, old and new, will be bidding their time until the crown slips from the King’s head, so they can strike true and deep.They will be waiting.





	1. Trouble

PART ONE

The sea reminded her of him.

It was the unpredictability. The tranquillity. The harshness. The beauty of a dangerous, terrifying energy.

It was the way the waves rocked her ship, slow and tender at first – but then curved menacingly into each other and crashed against the wood. It was the unending deep. A darkness filled with secrets and mysteries. So much to explore in those depths. So much she did not know.

And that was her Kaz.

Inej leaned against the rail of The Wraith and let the crisp night embrace her bones. She let her thoughts drift along with the waves, as they’ve been having the tendency to do so for the past two weeks. Somehow the dots in her mind always ended up connecting to him. To Kaz.

Hers.

A truth and a lie in that simple little word. In truth, Inej was not sure if she could call him that or if she would ever be able to call him as such. They had not made any promises to other another when Inej set sail to bring her parents back to Ravka – even then, when they said their goodbyes in fifth harbour that sunny morning, the ground had not been firm beneath their feet. There were a lot of things that they were not certain of.

But after everything, after their years together fighting side by side and protecting one another, after breaking into the Ice Court and winning against Van Eck, it was unavoidable that certain parts of Kaz started to belong to her, and certain parts of her began to call out to him in the same way. Even if Kaz still held his shield in front of his chest, Inej had picked apart his armour along the years – bits and pieces here and there, whenever he allowed it. And unknowingly, he had done the exact same.

Kaz did belong to her. And she belonged to him. Not in the way lovers belonged to each other, body and heart, and not in the way friends chose each other’s souls to belong to. When it came to Kaz and Inej that bond went deeper. It was more than a friendship, more than a romance. It was a partnership; more than body, heart and soul. Partners shared their whole being with one another. And, most importantly, they shared their minds.

Father used to always call her mother that. Partner.

“But she is your wife,” Inej remembered saying, her seven year old self pointing to her mother gathering wild geraniums which she used to decorate the table with.

She remembered her father’s loving gaze. How his eyes trailed across her mother’s dark hair that was set in a crown of braids. A Queen of the skies, they called her. And rightly so – her mother was the best acrobat in the world. She was personified grace, tumbling and dancing in that tightrope high in the air, as if she had been born to look like she had an invisible pair of wings on her all the time.

“Yes,” her father had said, and his gaze had turned soft, light brown eyes golden in the afternoon light. “But we are also partners. And partners are chosen in the stars. We belong to each other like the birds belong in the sky.”

“Chosen?” Inej had asked. “But how do the stars choose them, Papa? How does it work?”

“We do not know,” her father had said to her, smiling. He always had such a kind smile. “Only the stars know why two people are chosen to be together. Why two minds are connected to one another.”

“Oh,” little Inej had muttered. “Well…how will I know if I find the person the stars chose for me?”

Her father had looked at her then, really looked, and Inej felt as if he were looking into her mind, her soul. “You will know, my daughter,” he’d murmured to her, touching her cheek. “You will know.”

Inej held her captain’s hat in her hands, clutching it to her aching chest. The feather swayed with the cold breeze, tickling her chin, but Inej’s eyes were set in the distant horizon, where she could still see faint traces of Ravka.

Leaving her parents once more was the hardest decision Inej had to make.

The day they had arrived was the happiest day of her life. Seeing her mother’s dark hair, the gentle curls caressing her face, and her father’s gentle smile and big eyes-

Almost three years without them. She’d held them tight to her chest, her heart bursting, her cheeks wet, her mind blank of anything that wasn’t the sheer, blinding happiness at getting her parents back.

“My little girl,” her mother had cried, touching her cheeks and kissing her face. “We never lost hope.”

“Never,” her father said, tears in his own eyes that he refused to blink back, and his hands in hers so tight. “Never. We never gave up on trying to find our daughter.”

Her language came easily to her, a breath of fresh air on her face, a relief. She spoke the words and felt them on her tongue, relishing the open, melodic sounds. In that moment, in the arms of her parents, speaking her native tongue – Inej started to feel like her old self again.

“Papa, mama,” she cried – a little girl with scraped knees and hands, that fell hard off that tightrope and into the rough earth below. She was just a little girl then. “Blessed be the Saints. I knew I would see you again.”

And then – then she’d noticed her mother’s eyes resting on the boy leaning on his cane behind them. Inej had turned. And her eyes had met those of Dirtyhands.

He was smiling.

Inej had never seen that smile before. That open grin that brightened his eyes, that reddened his pale cheeks, that made his face look less harsh, less like the man the city thought him to be. And more like the man she knew he could be.

“Mama, papa,” Inej had said once more, wiping her tears now. Her eyes still glued to Kaz’s. She wanted to trace his cheeks – the evidence of his embarrassment. “This is Kaz.”

Kaz had seemed to fold in on himself. How different he had seemed. She smiled at him and held out a hand. The same hand he’d touched and held only minutes before.

“Come meet them,” Inej had said in Kerch, only to him. And her smile only widened when he took her hand, and she felt cold fingers entwined with her own. He had squeezed her hand just slightly, swallowed down the lump in his throat, and looked at her parents.

“Hello,” he had dipped his chin and spoken in Suli, surprising them. Inej smiled to herself. His accent had been truly terrible. But she appreciated the gesture.

“You are the man that protected our daughter,” her father had said. “That brought Inej back to us.”

Inej had translated it for him. Kaz had squeezed her hand again. Her heart gained wings at the effort he was making. Of not letting her go. But Inej also felt inclined to think that maybe Kaz must have been more nervous to speak to her parents than touch her.

Kaz had only shaken his head – a gesture her parents would interpret as humble, but Inej took it for what it was. I could have done more. It had been written all over his face.

Inej held his hand tighter.

“Thank you,” her mother had whispered to him. “Oh, thank you.”

And she had thrown her arms around him.

Kaz had looked absolutely terrified for a split second. But then, gently, he patted her mother’s back, and said, “No need to thank me, ma’am.”

Inej had translated that too.

His father had shaken Kaz’s hand. Inej’s fingers slipped from his then, aware that it could all become too much for Kaz. And instead, she had stood at his side, sometimes stealing glances at him, other times attempting not to let her tears flow freely once more, as she looked at her parents, safe and sound, in front of her.

Kaz and Inej had found a safe hotel room for her parents. And when it was late, Kaz went back to the Slat, and Inej laid down with her head on her mother’s lap.

She had wept for hours. Inej had told them everything.

It took up the rest of the afternoon and most of the night. Her father had wiped her tears while her mother stroked her hair, and when it got too much, when her chest got too tight and she felt like she couldn’t breathe, they held her.

They held her so tight.

The slave ship, the Menagerie, Tante Haleen, Kaz and the Dregs, the Ice Court. All her sins laid out for her mother and father to judge, everything she had done, every kill counted and every knife thrown – everything she had become. The truth and nothing but the truth. And hope – hope that her parents would understand. That they would forgive her.

In the end her father wept with her, and Inej touched his face, apologizing.

“My love,” her father had cried. “Why do you apologize?”

“I am a murderer.”

Her parents had looked upon her with surprise, even shock. Her mother had shaken her head reverently, touching her daughter’s hands. “Never,” she had said, tears spilling, voice shaking, “Never apologize for surviving, Inej. Never, my love.” 

“You are our brave girl,” her father said, touching her hair – the same as her mother’s. “There is nothing to forgive.”

She had felt like a little girl, helpless in the arms of her parents. But when the city became silent and the moon became high, Inej could only care about the soothing whispered voices of her mother and father.

The girl she had been…maybe a part of her was still there, hidden in the deep, covered by layers of fear and nightmares. Maybe she hadn’t been completely destroyed. But Inej had grown into the person she had needed to become to survive, and there was no turning back then. She cherished kindness in her heart still, but now she also cherished justice.

Her parents did not blink an eye. They did not hesitate to accept the daughter that they found. The daughter that now wore knifes around her hips instead of flowers in her hair.

Inej had fallen asleep like that. With her mother’s soothing hands on her hair, and her father’s gentle voice in her ears.

The night grew darker and darker outside, but her world had never looked brighter.

“Captain.”

Inej turned to Specht, her thoughts dissipating like clouds. 

He grinned. “We caught one.”

Inej took the long glass he offered, her heart thrumming in her chest. She peered through it in the direction Specht pointed to and – there. Not too far away, but far enough that a less keen eye would have ignored the white sails that blended into the darkness.

Inej smiled. “Let’s turn this ship around, Specht.”

“On your command.”

“Gather the crew.”

Specht walked away and Inej was left peering through the long glass, her hands just itching to grab Sankt Petyr. She would need something more solid than her knives this time. She would need a sword.

She grabbed the hilt of her sword and took it out of its sheath. The blade gleamed in the moonlight, beautiful and wicked. A sword worthy of her mission. She still had to name it. But first Inej would see how she would behave in battle. A name has to be worthy of the sword it belongs to.

“I need to save them, mama,” she’d murmured to her mother in their caravan one night. Three nights before, actually, when Inej first told them she would have to leave for the sea with her crew. Their faces grew solemn, but understanding. Inej had sighed, closing her eyes. “I need to save all those other girls and boys. I am their hope, papa.”

“You have only just arrived,” her father had said to her, eyes sad. Though Inej saw a fraction of guilt flash through his eyes. He’d felt selfish for saying the words. “I am sorry, my love,” he’d amended. “I know…I know your heart is noble-“

“We understand,” her mother had said. “We are just afraid that harm may come to you again.”

Inej almost smiled. “No harm could ever come to me now, mama.”

But it could – and she knew that. Even then, when she realized that she would spend an indefinite amount of time away from her parents once more, Inej knew that she could not, would not, give up on her cause. The seas needed her. All those children needed her. Ketterdam needed her.

Kaz-

Inej dared to imagine his face when he saw her. Two weeks they have not seen each other. And she was not surprised to find her heart speeding at the realization that she wanted to see him.

That she missed him.

“That boy,” her father had said quietly. “Will he be there to aid you if needed?”

Inej’s voice wobbled as she’d said, “Kaz will always be there, papa.”

Her mother had been looking at her as she’d said the words, and knew their implication. Inej did not bother to answer the silent question in her mother’s eyes. She was always a bad liar, and her mother a very clever and intuitive woman.

Still, her mother had said gently, “He means well, doesn’t he?”

“He does, mama.”

“Bring him here,” her father had said, taking her hand. “To meet the family.”

Inej had smiled. “I don’t believe Kaz will leave Ketterdam, papa. The Slat would destroy itself without him.”

“That boy would follow you to the ends of the world, my love,” her mother had said kindly, but surely. “He would follow you to the stars, if you asked him.”

Inej kept her eyes on that ship, far in the distance. On the sails she recognized. No ordinary ship sailed these waters. She knew this route. She knew that ship. And she would make sure it would sink to the bottom of the ocean.

Inej pulled the long glass down. She stared at the sea and silently asked Sankta Alina for protection. Let me be the flame that burns in the darkness. Sankta, let me be the fire that unleashes hell. Alina, protect me. Alina, give me strength. Alina, let me do what is right.

Inej Ghafa placed the hat on top her head – her new armour. It fit like a glove.

She smiled to herself.

She would be the broken glass in their shoes.

She would be the tenebrous shadow in all their nightmares.

She would be justice.

And she would bring trouble.

***

PART TWO

 

He locked the letter in his desk drawer with a heavy sigh.

The candle flickered in the darkness of his room, and Kaz stared and stared, unblinking, at the flame until his eyes burned. He let the night air kiss his face, and was reminded the way she had kissed his knuckles.

How do I stop thinking of you, Wraith? How do I silence your voice in my mind? How do I keep your phantom hands and lips from touching my face, when my dreams show me nothing else? Tell me. I don’t know what to do.

That’s what he’d written in that last one. With ink dripping messily everywhere, his handwriting so harsh that the paper had ripped in two places.

How do I stop loving you?

He could keep her out of his mind during the day. More often than not, he was busy with paper work and records and dealing with the Dregs’ shit. More often than not, his days were spent down below, barking orders and keeping tabs on his gang. Though at night, when he was alone, her face seemed clearer in the darkness. At night he remembered her touch vividly, as if she were in the room with him, touching him, in those moments.

How do I stop craving you?

It had been too dangerous to keep her parents here for more than a month. Inej was conscious of the fact that there might still be enemies lurking in the shadows of the darkened valleys and the too-quiet alleyways. It was a big risk. A risk she would not take.

Kaz knew.

He had known that there would be a time when that perfect dream of his would shatter and she would have to leave him. And he often wished her to. He had told her as much one night, when she’d been sitting at his windowsill like she always had before, looking out the window at the afternoon colours, the setting sun in the distance, the sea so close. Because he had seen hunger in her eyes then, as she stared outside. Hunger for something else, something more.

Something he would never be able to give her.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she’d simply said.

He’d stared at her from his bed, his tired limbs stretching in the mattress. His bad knee was propped up on a pillow (her idea) (her insistence), and his shirt was crumpled, his gloves placed neatly in the makeshift desk.

“Are you doing this for me?”

“Doing what for you, Kaz?”

He’d hesitated, choosing his words carefully. Tell her to go. Beg her to stay. Tell her you’re not enough. Beg her to want you anyway. “You would already be setting sail by now.”

She’d looked at him, then. Dark eyebrows furrowed. Lips pursed. Confusion and something else painted clear in her features. And then she just shook her head, and wrapped her arms around her legs, hugging her knees to her chest.

She was smiling.

Like she’d remembered an old joke, and was now keeping it from him.

“What?”

Again – a shake of her head. And then a wide smile. He’d propped himself into a sitting position, finding that smile lovely and strange-

And then he followed her gaze and saw the crow through the window. A scrawny little bird that just took its first flight off the nest, gazing at them. It flew away hurriedly, leaving a trail of black feathers on the crooked roof.

Inej’s smile hadn’t left her face as she’d murmured, eyes on the crow as it soared the skies. “Crows look out after one another. They don’t leave each other.”

“But you have your freedom.”

“And you have yours,” she’d said, turning to face him. “Do you not?”

No, he’d wanted to say. He would never truly be free, not really.

Not with Jordie’s voice shattering his mind every second of the day. 

“You have your freedom,” he’d repeated, turning his body to her completely, sitting on the edge of the bed. “And still you choose to spend that freedom with me?”

Inej had smiled again.

He remembered her just like this. On his windows, feeding crows. Kindness on her face. Hope in her eyes. Gentleness in her survivor’s heart. A smile on her lips that had taken his breath away, made him feel all those things – kind and hopeful and gentle.

He’d felt the exact same thing right then and there.

He’d wanted to reach out and trace the shape of her lips.

Inej had looked down at him with that full smile and, so slowly, she’d reached out a hand.

His gloves had not been near him.

Inej spread her fingers – please.

The warmth in her eyes had made him tingle. Be brave, my boy. His father had once told him. He didn’t know how he’d remembered his father’s voice at that moment. He’d been little, too little to remember much about the man, but those words had stuck with him. Or maybe he’d dreamt them. Be brave, Kaz. The world will push you down if you are not.

He reached for her and he’d let his fingers and palm drag through hers. His body shivered, his throat closed up, and his stomach swirled. But he could bear it. Now he could withstand it. When Inej entwined their fingers, Kaz had felt brave. He had felt like the world would never push him down again.

You choose to spend that freedom with me? That’s what he’d asked her.

She’d squeezed his hand before saying, “Yes.”

That night they lay side by side on his bed, a few centimeters apart, but close enough to share breath.

Kaz’s heart had been aching as her eyes traced his face. The need to reach out and tuck the pieces of hair that fell on her cheeks had been scratching at him. His fingers itched to trace the underside of her jaw, the tender, warm skin of her neck.

They had said nothing, still as stones. Then Inej had dared to run a finger down his face, down to his neck. His breath had hitched, but the soft touch made him see colours he’d never seen before. Her eyes were so careful, gentle, asking him questions before moving. Her finger had stopped at his pulse, feeling him breathe, and her brown eyes had looked up at him, into his own dark eyes, soft and calm. His haven.

Inej had removed her finger slowly, eyes on him. “Where is it alright for me to touch you?” Her voice was a whisper, a gentle caress in the darkness of his room. The moon was reflected in her eyes.

Kaz had closed his eyes, swallowing down the lump on his throat, suppressing the need to bury his face on her neck and breathe her sweet smell, of vanilla soap and rooftops and moonlight, so characteristically hers. “My hands,” he’d whispered back, voice rough with anticipation and nervousness and fear and want.

Her knuckles had grazed his. The briefest touch. Kaz had ignored the impulse to jump, to move away. This is easier. She’s warm. You are safe. You are safe. Inej. Inej.

Slowly, her hand had trailed over his wrist, and her eyes lifted up to meet his once more. “Your arms?” She’d asked.

Unsure, Kaz had nodded.

Inej had whispered, “Tell me to stop.”

Kaz had swallowed. He wanted her to never stop. He was not used to feel warm, and he liked the feeling. Slowly, he nodded again.

Inej’s hand slid up his arms, over his crumpled shirt, watching the way his muscles tensed and loosened under her touch. She stopped on his bicep, lingering. Kaz had observed her intently. With a lick of her lips that left him breathless, she’d moved up to his shoulder.

Kaz’s breathing changed, and he’d trembled in response. Carefully, Inej had peeled her hand away, smiling calmly.

“Your shoulders?”

He’d shaken his head.

“Alright,” she’d said kindly. She’d clasped her hands together against her chest.

Kaz remembered breathing in and out slowly, opening and closing his hands.

Inej had murmured to him, “My throat.” 

Kaz had looked up, brought back to reality by the soothing softness of her voice.

She’d continued then, avoiding his eyes, “I cannot bear any kind of touch on my throat.”

He’d stayed silent, listening. Inej breathed, “Here, in the center,” she’d touched her own throat, to her collarbones right up to the spot underneath her chin. “It…reminds me.”

He remembered then – the touch of his lips on the spot where her shoulder met her neck. And Inej must’ve read it in his eyes, for she added, “Here,” she’d touched that exact spot, lips parting at the memory, “to here,” and then traced a finger to the side of her neck, “is alright for me.”

Kaz had reached out in a moment of blind bravery, encouraged by her words, her touch.But before he could lay his hand on her skin, his eyes met hers, his hand hovering in the air.

Inej had nodded.

Kaz had closed his eyes, concentrating, and let his hand rest on the side of her neck, feeling her pulse beneath his touch. She’d been warm – scalding. He’d felt her swallow then, and met her eyes.

“It’s alright,” she’d murmured to him.

Kaz had left his hand there. He’d opened his eyes. “What else?”

“My wrists,” she’d said.

He’d made a mental note.

“Your mouth?” he’d whispered.

And Kaz hadn’t known what he’d said. If he’d thought of the words before saying them, they wouldn’t have come out of his mouth. He’d blurted them out, eyes stuck to her lips and their movements as she spoke.

Inej had opened and closed her mouth, and Kaz had been too drunk on her to think of words to say. She’d smiled slightly, saying, “That’s alright.”

He’d willed himself to draw closer, to lean down and touch his forehead to hers, his lips to hers. But he’d found he couldn’t. His hand on her neck had been shaking then, his breathing laboured, and the dark waters were starting to surround him. Darker and darker they became, shallower, colder. He couldn’t breathe.

“Kaz,” Inej had said, his name a song on her lips. “Look at me, open your eyes.”

He had.

“Come back to me,” she’d told him, touching his hand. “Come back to me.”

He’d fought with himself but-

But in the end his hand stayed resting on her skin. And Kaz did not move.

Cold.

No, warm.

Death.

No, life.

You will drown.

I will float.

“Come back to me,” she’d whispered, squeezing his hand.

He’d breathed in once, twice. A third time. Her pulse was beating. Her blood was warm. Safe land was there waiting for him.

“Talk,” Inej had begged gently. “Speak to me.”

“You’re so warm.”

He hadn’t remembered anything else to say.

But Inej had only smiled, kindness in her eyes and gentleness in her heart. “So are you, Kaz.”

His heart had calmed.

“Does it help?” Inej had asked, gesturing to his hand on her pulse.

“Yes,” he’d said with difficulty.

“Then stay,” she’d told him.

He hadn’t known if he could have. If he’d be strong enough to.

But he wanted to try. He had to try.

She’d caressed his hand. “Better?”

He’d nodded at her.

“Good,” her soothing voice had reached his heart. Her breath touched the top of his lip. “Where else is it okay?”

“My face,” he’d guessed.He had no idea.

Inej had reached over and Kaz had braced himself. But when her warm hand had cupped his cheek, he’d thought of nothing else but the warmth of her. He’d wanted to turn his face and kiss her palm.

Their eyes had met.

“Smile for me,” Inej had murmured, as if distracted, eyes squinting up at him. “Like you did that day.”

“Which day?” He’d asked, heart beating on his throat.

“That day you brought my parents back to me.”

And it had been such an odd request from her that Kaz had stayed with his eyes glued to her face, asking questions. Her thumb stroked his upper lip with careful intent. A silent plea.

Her brown eyes traced the shape of his lips then, before looking up at him. “I want to know how to make you smile,” she’d said, cocking her head to the side. “I want to know what causes you to laugh the loudest. I want to feel my heart bursting in my chest again, at seeing that smile.”

Kaz had felt out of words. He’d felt like he could have exploded right then. There had was something big inside his chest, crushing his heart.

“Crows can’t smile.”

She did smile then, proving him wrong. “This one can,” she’d said, looking down at his lips again and letting her thumb drag over his bottom one for emphasis. He was dying and being restored back to life in the same second that her thumb moved to his cheekbone. He’d looked at her own lips in return, even though he’d had them already memorized. “I have seen it.”

He’d fought the waters and had prayed to win. “Are you sure, Wraith? Maybe you’re wrong.”

“I’m never wrong.”

“You’re wrong about that crow.”

“No, I am not.” She’d said back, the corner of her lip curling into a smile. “He has a dimple.”

Kaz had raised an eyebrow.

“Yes,” Inej had said, nodding. “I saw it.”

“Inej.”

“It was the most beautiful smile I have ever seen.”

Without words. He’d been without words.

They’d stared at each other.

And then Inej had said, “He has a very dorky smile, that crow. It surprised me.”

Kaz hadn’t been able to help himself. Before he’d realized it, his lips had spread into a sideways grin, and he’d breathed a laugh.

The waters had recoiled.

He’d been surprised at himself, then. He’d looked at her, eyebrows raising.

Inej had smiled. And it was a triumphant sort of smile. The kind that created a million tiny little bubbles on his stomach, the kind that was so like Inej that it made him feel as if he was floating on warm waters, at a river’s edge with his feet dipped in, the sun on his face.

He’d allowed a smile right back at her.

So softly, Inej had reached over to the hand that was on her pulse and peeled it off. Kaz had watched her hold his hand up, and shivers ran down his spine, tickling his sweat-covered skin. He’d swallowed, but the sun was on his face and nothing could hurt him. She held his hand up. And then, tentatively, Inej placed the palm of her hand against his. Her fingers against his. She spread them.

Kaz had taken a breath, though he was afloat.

Inej had looked at him, and then her eyes traced their hands together, hers so small in comparison to his. Graceful hands, a gymnast’s hands; calloused yet soft, small yet with long fingers. He couldn’t remember why there were gloves behind her, sitting at his desk. Could not think of a use for them at that moment.

Sighing in contentment, Inej let her fingers close between his, and she laid her head comfortably on the pillow, resting their hands against her chest.

Her eyes had closed.

“Thank you,” she’d murmured.

“For what?”

Kaz had stared at her even then,tracing the contours of her face with his gaze, leaving no detail left to memorize.

“For everything.”

Their hands had stayed clasped for the rest of the night.

When he’d woken up, their bodies were tangled.

Kaz shook the memory from his mind.

How do I stop?

A knock on his door.

“Leave,” Kaz said without strength.

They opened the door anyway. Kaz grabbed his gun – a threat. He was in no mood. He didn’t turn around to receive the person.

“You haven’t left here for days.”

“Get out, Jesper.”

The sharpshooter closed the door behind him, ignoring the gun in Kaz’s hand. He sat on the bed, while Kaz remained at his desk, shooting Jesper an ugly frown.

“We need you at the Crow Club.”

“What happened?”

“Pim fucked up.”

He was in no fucking mood.

Kaz sighed, wanting to bang his face on his desk. He dropped the gun on his drawer, closing it with a loud thump.

“I thought Wylan was keeping you off the cards,” Kaz said.

“Moderation is a thing.”

“Is it?” Kaz looked through the window. “Even for you?”

Jesper sent him a look, but Kaz did not turn his gaze away. He heard the sharpshooter sigh, and then-

“Do you know when she’s coming back?”

“No, Jesper, I don’t fucking know if she’s coming back.”

“If? Kaz, this is Inej we’re talking about, she would not leave. Not without a permanent goodbye. That was not permanent.”

It had felt permanent to him.

He’d almost lost his damn mind as he’d walked away from the harbour. What he would give to be able to destroy his own pride. His selfish ass would have kneeled, if that would’ve made her stay.

But Kaz had wanted her freedom. He’d wanted to give her the things that Ketterdam had taken away from her. And Inej would not come back. If she was clever – and Kaz knew she was – then she would not bother. 

“Kaz-“

“Drop the subject. I’ll go to the Crow Club tomorrow morning. Get Pim’s ass to my office at first light.”

He got up, walked to the water basin at the end of the room. He washed his face with cold water, sighing when he felt it running down his neck, soaking his collar. 

“She will come back,” Jesper said. “You must know that.”

Kaz leaned against wooden table, watching its chips and broken edges. He found himself whispering, “What if she doesn’t.”

There was a heavy silence in the room, and only the sound of Jesper’s footsteps filled it. He did not dare to meet his friend’s eyes, couldn’t. Jesper could easily read him. There was no need to make it more obvious.

How much it hurt not to have her.

“Nina sent word,” Jesper muttered.

Kaz’s eyes didn’t stray from the ruined wood. “How is she?”

“Better, it seems,” Jesper said, sighing. “It was difficult for her, after Matthias.”

A part of Kaz missed her and everything that came with Nina Zenik. Nina, and Wylan and Jesper and Matthias and Inej. He missed their group. As foolish and ridiculous as it was. They had done terrible things to get one step closer to their dreams, and he’d almost led them all to complete destruction, but-

They had shared the victory. They had shared the fear and the doubt and the excitement and all the problems that came along.

He felt weak even thinking about it. Ashamed. He wanted to wipe the feeling off his system.

Kaz straightened up. “I need you to come to fifth harbour with me tomorrow.”

“The peace treaty with the Dime Lions? We’re really doing that?” Jesper scoffed, almost laughing. He tapped his guns on the side of his hips. “It’s clearly a trap.”

“Yes, it’s clearly a trap,” Kaz said. “That’s why we’re going to be sending a message.”

Kaz could hear the hesitation in the sharpshooter’s voice. “You know, Kaz – I am your friend. Really, I am. But there are times – and this is one of them, by the way – where I think ‘This guy is nuts. I need to take him to a mental facility. Like right now’. You want to provoke the Dime Lions? Why?”

“They killed one of ours. We take down one of them. An eye for an eye.”

“Len was dumb. You know he got in the way-“

“It doesn’t matter,” Kaz said, turning his gaze to Jesper. “After the Crow Club – we’re there. In the harbour.”

Jesper sighed. “Anything else I should know, boss?”

“No. Goodnight.”

He flinched at his own tone, but only turned away from Jesper. He felt a bitter taste in his mouth.

“You know,” Jesper continued. “One of these days you could actually try and talk to me. I’m not a good listener, so you know I won’t spill all your secrets.”

Kaz sat on the edge of his bed tiredly. “About what, Jesper.”

“About Inej, for instance.”

Kaz looked up, blood boiling.

“Look, you were the happiest I have ever seen you two weeks ago. I don’t know what kind of relationship you guys have, but-“

“Shut up.”

“-but I only know that that girl is the only person in the planet capable of putting a damn smile on your face. So you should hold on to her and-“

“And trap her here in this gods-forsaken city, Jesper? And deprive her of the things she wants most? Inej doesn’t belong here.”

Kaz didn’t know where all that rage suddenly came from. He didn’t know how his self-control had shattered into pieces at the mention of her name. He didn’t know why those words had blurted out of his mouth quicker than he could stop them.

He didn’t know. And he didn’t want to understand.

He looked away, towards the window. Hurt and embarrassed.

Jesper was silent for a moment. Kaz wanted to be alone. But his friend said, “Have you considered the possibility that she might want you too?”

Kaz started. He looked up.

Jesper’s eyes were drawn to the window too, and did not meet his. “If she does – then what’s stopping her from having both?”

“Both what,” he demanded.

“You and all the things she wants most, as you put it.”

Kaz was silent.

He had no answer.

He didn’t want to discuss this with Jesper, with anybody.

“First light tomorrow. Don’t be late.”

Jesper gave him a bored look. “I’ll see if Wylan doesn’t keep me in bed too late.”

Kaz rolled his eyes, and Jesper scoffed a laugh. “Sour mood,” he said to Kaz. “Remind me to grab you some waffles on my way here tomorrow. Maybe what you need is something sweet.”

“What I need is for you to leave.”

Jesper smirked. And then turned serious in the same heartbeat, “Don’t you go meet the Lions with a hot head. Whatever that’s tormenting you – clear it out. Tonight. Or you’ll get yourself killed.”

“Thanks for worrying.”

“That’s what friends are for,” he shot back. And then, “You asked Wylan for more explosives.”

“Yes.”

“And you didn’t tell him what for.”

“No.”

“Do I want to know?”

“No.”

“Fuckin’ hell, Kaz.”

Kaz said nothing as Jesper left. The sharpshooter closed the door behind him without making a noise. It reminded her of his wraith.

He let his head fall in his hands. Let her go.

He needed to let her go.

Sighing, Kaz looked towards the window. His heart fell out of his chest when he saw a crow perched up on the roof, looking down into the street. The dark feathers blended into the night, like Inej did.

Like Inej once did.

Kaz turned his eyes away. He rested his head on the pillow where her smell still lingered. He closed his eyes and thought of warm waters.

One night, when they’d been laying side by side on his bed, she’d showed him her wrist.

“What?” he’d asked, looking up at her.

“Touch me.”

Kaz started.

“If you can – I would like you to.”

And Kaz knew the challenge that it was for her. He saw it in the stubborn eyes, in the set mouth. Her refusal to keep the ties to the past uncut.

Ever so gently, he had let go of the hand he was holding, and dipped his fingers down, sliding against her skin, thumb tracing the tender skin of her wrists.

“Just don’t…squeeze,” she said breathlessly.

“Inej.”

“Don’t let go.”

Kaz had stared at her face, fingers hesitant.

Inej inched closer to him, forehead touching his, eyes closed. Kaz had closed his eyes, breathing in shakily, but neither of them pulled away, and all the while he kept stroking her wrist, brief and kind touches that he’d learned with her.

Inej had opened her eyes and he had to as well - just to see her smile. Triumph in those depths of chocolate brown.

“It feels so different now,” she’d murmured.

And Kaz hadn’t really understood what she meant, but when Inej didn’t pull away, Kaz dared to inch closer to her hand. His eyes did not leave hers. Not as his lips touched the inside of her wrist.

Inej’s mouth had parted, but she had not seemed taken aback. No, her eyes filled with tenderness as she stared at him, as her gaze drifted from his lips on her skin to his eyes. Kaz hadn’t pulled away, and there they stayed all night.

He’d been drunk on the feeling of her fingertips sliding idly against his. Of her smile. Of the light in her eyes that only seemed brighter each day. Of spending mornings next to her in the same bed, tracing lazy, distracted circles on her wrist. He’d been drunk on her.

In the back of his mind, he knew. He knew he had to keep counting the hours and the minutes and every excruciating and lovely second that she gave him. But when she laid down next to him, Kaz could not think of anything else. There was nothing but her steady breathing, her sleeping face so close yet so far away from him. He had wanted to reach out and pull a strand of hair away from her face. He didn’t. The boy in him was terrified of the water still.

Those moments with her - they were everything. 

And he was drunk. So drunk on her.

But the bottle eventually emptied. It just did not occur to him back then. 

And that was the trouble with wanting her. He quickly forgot how easily he could lose her.

How do I stop?

***

PART THREE

Ever since Rollins disappeared to saints knew where, the Dime Lions were now led by another face. A scarred one, with pierced ears and a smile sharper than broken glass.

Kaz strolled through fifth harbour, watching Elias’ smug smile from across the square. Three years his senior, Elias had the physical constitution of a brick house, andwas twice as dumb as a door. His reign was still fairly recent, but the three other brick houses byhis side looked at their boss with unfathomable loyalty. Foolish, really.

Kaz felt Jesper on his side fidgeting with adrenaline and nerves and excitement, guns strapped to his belt. Kaz had no visible weapons. But then again – the most dangerous of weapons were always invisible. His wraith had taught him that.

“I thought we said bring no one but yourself,” Kaz said as he stopped a few meters in front of his rival.

Elias grinned, and Kaz wanted to roll his eyes and sigh. “I thought we said no guns.”

“Touché.”

Child’s play.

“You reached out,” Kaz continued, crossing his arms in front of his chest. “So talk.”

He knew that grin – the tugging at the corners of his lips, the slight sneer. He knew it all too well.

“I must extend my…sincere apologies for the death of one of yours.”

Kaz said nothing. Jesper said nothing.

A public place would not stop a shooting, no matter how many children of women were walking around – there was no stopping them from creating a bloodbath right then and there.

Elias continued, all smiles and sarcasm. “I want to offer you a chance to create peace between our very different families.”

“I don’t make deals with Dime Lions.”

Jesper’s breathing changed.

Kaz did not take those words back.

Elias wasn’t surprised. Of course. He expected it. He laughed softly, sweetly, like a charming boy would. “Brekker, mate…I don’t think you have a choice in this scenario.”

“There is always a choice.”

“What?” Elias laughed. “Are you going to try and kill us, mate? Is that what this is?”

“Isn’t that what you came here to do?”

“Why, you wound me,” the Lion boss said, touching his chest. Kaz caught the movement like a predator. “And here I thought we could be friends-“

“Nice sleeves,” Kaz said. “What are they? 100% asshole?”

“Satin, actually.”

“Fancy.”

In the blink of an eye, five weapons were drawn. Jesper gritted his teeth, angling the guns in his hands slowly, head cocking to the side. Elias’ three men did the same, breathing hard. But Elias barely moved, and neither did Kaz. They stared each other down. The square emptied in a heartbeat, screams dissipating in the early morning light.

“You know, mate,” Elias said, sighing dramatically. “One of these days you’ll need to stop being so fuckin’ uptight.”

“You killed one of my men.”

Elias waved a hand. “Happens.”

The three men put themselves in front of Elias, ready to strike. Kaz counted in his head the number of dregs hidden on the rooftops, waiting for his command. He counted seconds in his head, counted heartbeats.

"More money, more mayhem, more scores to settle. Was there never another dream?” 

Her words echoed in the back of his mind as those guns pointed at his chest.

Was there never another dream?

There was, Kaz thought to himself. But it sailed away on a ship.

“I will give you another chance, Brekker,” Elias said, voice mimicking his smile. Sharp, mocking. “I will lower my weapons, pretend this never happen, give you a pat on the head and off you go, ‘right?”

Kaz uncrossed his arms, and this time he really did sigh. “Four of my men have clean shots. One gesture from me – your three Lions there, there and over there,” Kaz pointed. “Will die. And you will too.”

Elias’ mouth twitched – surprise. He could almost see the confusion in the other man’s mind, trying to figure out how Kaz knew. How on earth he would know.

“That’s your cousin on the left, isn’t it?” Kaz continued, looking over.

“I will kill you.”

“Do it,” Kaz dared. “Oh-Oh, no wait. Shit, Jesper, why did you let me forget?”

Jesper didn’t dare to look confused. He didn’t even meet Kaz’s eyes.

Kaz turned to Elias. “If we don’t come back, your cave will be blown up to pieces.”

Elias widened his eyes for a fraction of a second, then furrowed his eyebrows. Kaz knew the guy wasn’t particularly smart but – saints. The daftness.

“My spider is well acquainted with your house,” Kaz said. “And very familiar with the basement.”

Elias’ eyes flashed. Realization.

Bingo.

“I will press this button,” Kaz showed him the little electronic object in his hand. Wylan had a hand for these things. “And boom.”

The three men stepped forward, but Elias held out a hand. “Do NOT open fire. Stand the FUCK down.”

The men looked confused.

Elias looked at Kaz. There was something like fascination in his eyes. Fascination mixed with wild, infernal rage.

“You’re bluffing.”

“Do you really want to take that chance?” Kaz shot back. “I am not bluffing. Your crew will be dead by my hands and the Dime Lions will cease to exist.”

“You, Brekker, you will die for this.”

“I will die – certainly. But not by your hand.”

Shots rang out.

The square became smoke and ash. In those spare milliseconds, Kaz saw men that were not his own fall of the roofs with strangled cries and cut throats. Elias disappeared. A Dregs member fell off the roof and Kaz heard the sharp sound of bones breaking.

Jesper, almost immediately, diverted the bullets from the three men in front of them. And before they could look confused or fire another shot, Jesper shot them both dead.

Not half a heartbeat later, Kaz was drawing a knife from under his sleeve. He threw it, the strength making the bones of his shoulder ache, and watched it land on the side of the last man’s neck. He dropped to the ground.

Elias was nowhere to be seen.

Kaz took out his gun from his coat pocket. The square was empty now save for the Dregs, slowly disappearing in the rooftops.

“Where did he go?” Jesper murmured, turning on a full circle, the two guns still in his hands.

But Kaz didn’t answer.

No, because in the distance – there. In berth twenty-two.

His heart fell out of his chest. His mind went blank.

He took a step forward.

She was looking at him. Her mouth was open. Her eyes were frightened. She was far from him. But so close. She was so close.

And it was those two seconds. Just those two seconds that changed everything.

Kaz had turned, remembering, and quickly held up his gun.

Not fast enough.

He heard screams then – from her, calling out to him – and Jesper.

“KAZ!”

Gun shots beside him rang as Jesper realized what was happening. He raised his arms, shooting with expertise, attempting to deviate the bullets coming from everywhere and anywhere.

Not fast enough.

Kaz saw it flash before his eyes. And he turned his body in less than a second, but even then he knew he hadn’t been fast enough – his bad knee had slowed him down.

“KAZ!”

Inej.

Another body slumped to the ground.

When Kaz looked down, his hand was covered in his own blood.

TO BE CONTINUED


	2. King

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If I was going to die-
> 
> I remember thinking it, as the world blurred in front of me. The only thing keeping me tethered to the grey, smoke-filled reality of my life was her voice that, between flashes of consciousness, rang in my ears, echoed in my mind, and wrapped around my bones, my blood, my very own heartstrings.
> 
> I remember thinking it: if I were to die - then I wanted to part with the memory of her smile, for it was the only thing that ever mattered.

In the distance, screams.

I’m all too aware of them, despite the silence that seems to slowly crush me as blood pours out of the side of my body. I can’t see where the wound is. I can’t feel the exact spot, either. The pain is a wave, and it undulates quickly, in time with my heartbeat, between my hip and my shoulder.

I’m too aware now of the voice next to me, sweet and panicked, lovely and untamed. I want to say something to calm her, but the words refuse to form on my mouth. I hear my name from her lips and it’s enough for me to hold on to the nothingness that surrounds me. I want to tell her, I need to tell her, that I’m trying. I’m trying. I’m trying to stay. I will try to stay for you, Inej. But it’s only for you.

I hold on to that voice next to me.

But when the voice is gone – so am I.

And then I am lost.

***

PART TWO

 

She’s on my window ledge.

She used to sit there. I used to sit at my desk. I used to watch her, like I am now, without her noticing, and then turn away whenever she caught my eye. I always refused to meet her eye, for I was constantly afraid that she would see something in my gaze that she wouldn’t like. And maybe I was scared to be confronted with the desperation painted across my own eyes reflected in hers.

Her hair is braided at the back like the last time I saw her. Strands curl around her face, wisps fall from her braid like she’s been running. I wonder who she was after.

There is a bowl of water on my desk and I stare at it. Bandages covered in blood were thrown and piled into a trashcan. My eyes lift, and I feel the painful stab in the middle of my brow that makes me wince.

She turns to look at me.

I missed her. I missed her. I missed her.

“Kaz,” she whispers. Her voice. And I am found.

My throat feels clogged and too dry.

“Stay still,” she says, coming towards me. She’s wearing clothes I have never seen on her.

Before I’m able to speak, the back of her hand touches my forehead and it makes me flinch.

“It’s me,” she says gently, pulling back almost instantly. “Open your eyes. It’s me, Kaz.”

I know it’s her.

But I can’t believe it. She left. She wasn’t coming back. She was never supposed to come back.

I feel the mattress underneath me dip as she sits down next to my waist, her worried eyes intent on me. “I need you to stay still, alright?” She asks.

I nod.

Carefully, the back of her hand touches my forehead once more. It’s there one second and gone the next and I want her touch back. I want to apologize for flinching away. I want to tell her that years of pushing people away and hiding myself has turned the flinching into a reflex. A habit. I want to tell her it’s not her. I want to have my hands caressing her cheeks all the time, too.

“You’re burning up,” she whispers to herself.

“Inej.”

“Yes?”

I don’t remember what I was about to say. I don’t know what to say to her. I don’t know if I’m dreaming of her hand touching my arm right now. I don’t know why I’m not dreading her touch.

“Rest,” she says gently. “You need rest.”

She lifts herself up and I’m panicking. “Where?” Is what comes out of my mouth. Rough and almost angry. Inej turns to me. “Where are you going?” I finish with difficulty.

She comes back to me and her hand cups my burning cheek. I think she’s going to kiss me but Inej presses her lips against my forehead instead. Her lips are cold and I don’t understand. I’ve felt them on my skin and they were always warm. But the feeling is there. It’s her. The softness, the gentleness of her kiss – it’s her.

Inej pulls away too soon and stares down at me, her thumb tracing patterns on my cheek. “I will be here.”

“Inej.”

“Yes, I’m here,” she murmurs. “I will be here.”

I feel the silence around me thicken. My head spins and my hand grips hers. “Don’t leave,” I choke out the words in barely a whisper. “Don’t leave me.”

The last thing I see is her brown eyes.

The last thing I hear is her voice. “Never.”

***

PART THREE

 

“He’s been slipping in and out of consciousness,” I hear her say. “But the fever has gone down. He’s out of danger.”

Someone else’s voice: “Do you need me to get something else?”

“I don’t think so, Jes,” she says. “All he needs is sleep right now. He’s lost an awful amount of blood.”

“And you? How are you feeling?”

“Relieved.”

“And clearly exhausted. You need to come home and sleep, Inej.”

“His fever might come back in the night,” she says. “I’m comfortable here. Trust me.”

“Even if you weren’t you would never admit it.”

“I’m fine.”

“Alright. Send message if you need us.”

“I will, Jesper. Thank you. Yes. Goodnight.”

Footsteps. Then a cloth being dipped in water. The rain outside. Her soft sigh.

“Inej.”

She jumps out of her skin, dropping the cloth in the water. She looks at me, widening her eyes in surprise. And then – a smile, as bright as the world, big as the moon outside. It’s a smile that she can’t contain, from the looks of it, or she would’ve toned it down. The shock makes her forget.

“You’re awake,” she says, and walks to me. She sits by me. “How are you feeling?”

Small flashes of what happened crossed my mind as she’d spoken to Jesper. The shooting. The plan gone wrong. Her ship docking in the distance, her eyes meeting mine – my distraction.

I look down to see a bandage wrapped around my whole bare torso. Suddenly I feel nauseated-

“I bandaged you,” Inej explains, watching the apprehension in my eyes. My body relaxes slightly, but that anxious rise in my chest sets me on edge. “And I took the bullet out. No one touched you but me.”

My breath comes out shaky and I’m suddenly embarrassed. Embarrassed and a lot more things I need to sort through. My initial confusion is replaced by anger – anger that I had let those two seconds go to waste; two seconds with which I could have done to the Dime Lion’s boss what he did to me. And I endangered my crew in the process.

“The others?” I ask, feeling my throat dry and itchy.

Inej lifts a glass of water to my lips. “Drink first,” she says. I try to grab the glass from her hand, but the pain ripples in my chest in waves, and I can’t- “Kaz,” Inej sighs, “Let me help.”

Grudgingly, I do. It feels wrong to have her in this position – taking care of me. It makes me feel…less than I already was.

“Drink,” she commands. “Slowly.”

I do. It takes all my self-control not to drink it all in one sip.

Inej puts the glass down and sighs softly, “Everyone was alright and safe. Except you.”

“Someone fell off a roof-“

“Pim is fine. A broken leg will do him good,” she says. “Maybe he’ll start to take care of himself from now on and stop being an idiot.”

I take it as the jab that it is. Her brows aren’t furrowed, her lips aren’t pursed, but I can feel the soft anger from her. Even her anger is gentle.

I flinch as I sit up. Inej watches me with a cat’s gaze, and I have never felt smaller.

“I had to do it,” I grumble.

“Did you?” She says quietly. “Did you really?”

“He took one of our men,” I tell her.

“I know,” Inej mumbles, turning her face away. “Jesper filled me in. What was the plan, Kaz?”

She rubs her face as she says it, and I’m shaken at how much I hate the disappointment in her voice; the frustration. It makes me ache.

It’s my turn to look away. Because I’m weak and a coward. “Anika was in charge of the explosives-“ I start to say.

“But you never placed them in their basement,” she says. “Did you Kaz?”

“The idea was enough,” I say. “Elias-“

“He will make you pay for this,” she warns me.

“I know,” I tell her, torn between feeling stupidly sorry for myself and angry that she’s reminding me of my own stupidity. “How many days have I been out?”

“Just two,” she says, crossing her arms.

I stare at her. Really stare at her.

Her cheeks are full, healthy, even though she looks tired. Her eyes are bright, the happy glint forever imprinted on them. I wonder how long it will take for this city to wipe that happiness out of her. My fists clench on their own accord.

Her face softens. “Kaz.”

“You came back.”

“Yes,” she says, confused. Her nose wrinkles. “I said I would.”

I stay silent, ignoring the pain in my chest that has nothing to do with the hole the bullet left in me.

Inej touches my arm tentatively – my bare arm. I breathe in, her touch feeling like a current. It’s intoxicating. “I told you I would come back, didn’t I?” She asks. “Why do you look surprised to see me?”

“I thought you’d stay. In Ravka,” I say, my voice low. It sounds and feels like sandpaper.

“We had a deal. You were to help me, remember?” She reminds me, raising her eyebrows.

“You should have stayed with your parents, Inej.”

She looks as if she’s been slapped in the face. My breath is whisked from my lungs and my heart actually stumbles as the hurt flashes in her eyes for a second.

There’s a pause in which she just looks at me, analysing. There’s doubt in the way that she purses her lips, and her voice kills me as she says, “Do you not want me here?”

“If you think that’s my point then you have not been listening to me.”

Answer her properly, Brekker. Tell her what you want to tell her. What she wants to hear. It’s what you want too.

But what comes out of my mouth is:

“I told you I was not a good man, Inej.”

She scoffs, shaking her head. “A bad man would have exploded all the Lions in that house out of spite, Kaz.” And to my surprise, there’s a hint of a smile ghosting her lips. “No you’re not good. You’re not bad, either. You’re very grey.”

The plan was always for Anika to gain Elias’ trust. And she had. With one of those faces that could change with a wig or a different type of pain on her cheeks or eyes, she had no trouble wondering into the Dime Lions’ nest. Her guidelines were simple and straightforward – not reveal her identify; cut the throat of anyone who found her out. And she had done her job well. She gained free entry of the Lion’s nest, and at any moment I could use one of the buttons Wylan had made – the one not meant for the explosives – to warn her. And she knew what she had to do.

And it helped that the guy was not the brightest bulb in the bunch. None of them were. If I had told her to place the explosives she would have. It’s what I should have done in the first place.

But looking at Inej’s face right now – I start to doubt myself. I start to doubt that I would do it.

“I fucked up,” I tell her.

She smiles. “Yes, yes you did. We’ll fix it.”

“We?”

“I’m here to stay. Try to be the good man and tell me to go back to Ravka, back to my family, all you want. But you will not succeed. I will go back, as much as I can, of course. But for now…for now I need your help,” she says. My face heats and I try to convince myself it’s the fever coming back.

Then a few seconds later her face crumbles into something like bitterness. It’s an odd look on Inej.

“What?”

“I thought I’d stumbled into a slave ship. Maybe I prayed that I would find Haleen there,” she looks at the ceiling. “After she ran out of Ketterdam I thought I would find her on the sea.” She shakes her head, and looks down at me. “Just pirates. That’s why I came back earlier than I thought I would. There was nobody to take back.”

“You will go on to save millions, Inej,” I tell her, as if she doesn’t already know. “It was your first trip.”

Inej nods. “I thought I would start here. Save the city that created me first – and then move to the sea.”

The city that turned her into The Wraith.

I stare at her for what it feels like endless minutes. I can’t get the words out of my mouth – how good it feels to have her here. How thankful I am that she saved my life so I could see her again. How thankful I was that she existed. How-

How much I-

But I have a feeling that she can see it all in my face because then she’s smiling slightly. The same smile she gave me whenever she laid down next to me on this very bed. The smile I saw before I fell asleep with her fingers entwined in mine most nights.

A long pause. And then…

“Hello, Wraith,” I whisper. What I should have said. “Welcome home.”

Her smile widens. Inej brushes her knuckles against mine – a question in her eyes. Gently, as much as I can move, I take her hand in mine and breathe in a tight breath. It feels like I haven’t touched her in years. It’s too much, all of a sudden, and I almost let her go. But then her fingers are curling and they’re entwined in mine, and all I can think of is the warmth of her hand and how familiar it feels.

Bearable. More than bearable.

“Hi, Kaz,” she says gently, thumb tracing my skin. “It’s good to be back.”

“Thank you for saving my life.”

“You’ll return the favour another time, I’m sure.”

I start. “That’s not remotely funny, Inej.”

Not much had changed between us during that month after everything. I was still a criminal and she was still lovely. But then again – a lot had changed, with everything considered. Whenever Inej wasn’t with her parents she was with me. The nights were ours. And my hands were on her skin. Tracing the contours of her face, like I have always wanted to, pressing against the warm pulse on her neck, dragging down the length of her arm down to her hand. She’d pulled me out of the waters several times. And then there were moments where Inej would breathe in sharply and I would know to hold her some other way. It helped to pull her close. Her breathing steadied. My voice calmed her, she said. It was different from theirs.

We would fall asleep inches apart, with our hands clasped together. And we would always, always, wake up with our legs thrown over the other, our arms wrapped around each other’s bodies, Inej’s head pressed against the centre of my chest, right underneath my chin.

I would not wake up screaming.

I would wake up warm.

And Jordie would be gone.

Sometimes Inej woke up in the middle of the night and pushed me away.

I knew what she’d seen in her dreams by the way her fingers trembled against my chest, gripping my shirt. She never shed a tear. But the vulnerability behind her eyes was the one thing that made me sorry that Haleen had escaped without the marks of my hands around her throat.

I would breathe with her then, talk to her, listen to her, until the early hours of the morning. As she did with me. And the nightmares would fade into nothing, turning into long-forgotten memories that were scattered and lost in the sea. Inej would slowly come back to me, and rest her head on my chest, her small frame hidden by mine. And I would slowly wrap my arms around her, and picture the waters recoiling, fading away like rainclouds. I would let the comfort of her warmth bring me back to life. And it became bearable.

It became more than bearable. It became a necessity, almost. For both of us.

“How have you been before…what happened in the harbour?” She asked, still holding my hand.

I don’t have a quick answer. My eyes almost point to the drawer where all the letters I’ve written to her lie, but I simply look down at her hand. “Busy. The Crow Club is taking its toll. And the Dregs don’t help. Jesper came around eventually, and after Len was killed he said he would come back to lend me-“

She squeezes my hand and I stop.

Inej smiles. “How have you been, Kaz?”

It’s a novelty – talking. Letting her push my limits like this. She gives me space to talk to her, confide in her. Let’s me have the moments I need to regain my breath whenever the pressure in my chest threatens to destroy me or when Jordie’s voice is so loud in my head that I stop hearing hers. And it’s hard. Yes, it’s still hard. Even after telling her about my brother. I couldn’t put myself at ease as she listened, for there was always that voice in the back of my mind – and I didn’t exactly know who that voice belonged to, if it was mine or my brother’s – that told me you’re sharing too much, you’re too weak, you’re too vulnerable.

She never makes me feel vulnerable.

I am unstoppable, made of iron and steel, strong as the wind, whenever she looks at me.

But even now – I struggle to find the words.

So she finds them for me. “I missed you,” she says gently, and squeezes my fingers for emphasis.

This is all I have ever wanted.

Why do I feel so empty?

Because I don’t deserve her. I don’t deserve this.

“I missed you,” I say quietly, squeezing her hand back. I try not to think about how long this strength might last me this time.

I don’t wonder for long, because Inej is laying down next to me, and her head is resting on my pillow right next to my head, and I can feel her breath on my cheek. And she’s so warm and alive. Her hand is so warm. She is so warm. Warm. Warm.

Not dead.

“Do you want me to leave?” She asks. And I know she will if I nod.

I almost can’t bear it. Two weeks without seems to have taken its toll, and my mind is no longer used to the feel of her so close to me. My body only wishes to pull her closer; it urges me to bury my face on her collarbones and breathe her scent, touch her sides and tell her-

Tell her I love her.

“No,” I croak.

“Then I will stay,” she simply replies.

Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.

“That’s it,” she whispers to me. She’s smiling. “Easy now, isn’t it?”

“Easy,” I mutter.

Inej watches me. And I watch her. There’s a universe separating us, and yet there is nothing much at all. I imagine myself turning my body to hers, taking her chin in my fingers and kissing her. I imagine my lips dragging over her cheeks, making her smile, then her jaw, and I think that I want to hear what sounds she can make when my mouth touches the underside of her ear. 

“You can kiss me,” she murmurs softly.

I see her staring at my lips. Given her words, I realize I must have been staring at hers to begin with. I breathe in a startled breath. I’m in shambles.

It’s all I want to do – lean in and kiss her. See if those lips are as soft as they look, as I imagined and dreamed them to be. But that spark of bravery in me has burned out and all that’s left is fear.

I don’t know what I’m doing.

“Kaz,” she whispers. “Have you ever kissed someone before?”

She asks this distractedly, like she’s simply curious and whichever the answer is – it doesn’t matter. But my tongue is stuck in the roof of my mouth.

“I wouldn’t be any good at it, Wraith,” I tell her, placing the hand I’m clutching on top of my chest, right over the bandage. Inej looks at her hand on my chest, and looks up at me. There’s something wise in her eyes – an understanding that goes beyond the surface.

She knows what I’m referring to. And she says, “I know you, Kaz. I have seen you. And I’m not afraid.”

One moment we’re a universe away and then the next we’re only breaths apart. I touch my forehead to hers, and close my eyes. I want to give her more. I want to give my whole being to her. I want to be enough.

“I am,” I say to her, breathing in deep, ignoring the tug deep inside myself to pull away. “I am afraid of you.”

“No,” Inej says, and there’s that smile in her lovely voice. “You are afraid of yourself.”

I look at her. Inej’s eyes are on my chest – on my wound. She sighs softly, “What if I hadn’t come home so soon Kaz?”

I simply stare at her.

Her eyebrows furrow together. “What if you hadn’t looked at me?”

I shake my head, pulling away slightly to get a better view of her face. “I could’ve been shot all the same.”

“You certainly deserved it for being so reckless,” she shoots me a look. A very Inej look. “But-“

“You saved me,” I say. “Don’t look back.”

Don’t look back.

It’s what I should have been telling myself all along. Don’t look back at the water, at my dead brother, at my dead father, at my missing mother, at my burned down farm, at my burned down childhood. Don’t look back, Kaz. Look in front – she’s waiting for you.

Inej sighs again.

“I’m not going anywhere, Inej.”

“Promise me.”

I part my lips to tell her, but the urgency in her voice makes me stop for a few moments. “I promise,” I say slowly.

“No,” she says. “Don’t tell me. I want to see that promise. I want to see you be careful with yourself.”

“Aren’t I always?”

“You know you were reckless, Kaz.”

Yes, I do know.

I knew every member of my crew was protected. I knew Jesper could swipe bullets left and right and never get hit. I knew I trusted my gut too much, and it didn’t work out. But I also knew put myself in a vulnerable position. And maybe I was waiting for that bullet to come all along.

“Moments ago you were asking me to kiss you,” I raise an eyebrow at her. “And now you’re fighting with me?”

Inej’s hand on my chest tightens on my hand. “I wasn’t asking you.” 

“It’s what I heard.”

“You heard wrong.”

I smile for what feels like the first time in forever. “Tell me about your family.”

Inej looks at me for a few seconds, and then she starts talking.

It’s comforting to hear her speak of family life. They lived in Os Alta, in a village far from the palace, and have been staying there for over three months.

“My cousins – they’re all grown up,” she says with a smile. Her hand caresses mine as she speaks. “I almost forgot how numerous they were.”

I hear her for hours, until her eyelids start drooping. Even then I want to hear more. There is something about Inej when she talks about her roots. The way she laughs, the way her accent seems to cling more and more to those long, melodic vowels and lose the Kerch’s sharp consonants, the way she…just the ways he looks.

I find my mind in chaos.

Occasionally she touches a hand to my forehead as she talks, then I see that relief flash her eyes and the corner of her lip lift. It makes me want to hold her.

“I’m fine,” I tell her for the twentieth time.

She still doesn’t believe me after the thirtieth.

When her voice slows, she takes my hand, and clutches it to her heart with a yawn.

“Sleep,” I tell her.

“You didn’t answer me.”

“About what?” I ask, closing my eyes. I touch her forehead again with mine, and find that I can breathe a little easier now.

“Whether you’d kiss me.”

“You didn’t ask me.”

“Will you kiss me?”

We look at each other.

And there’s a quiet moment, where everything seems suspended in the few seconds our eyes meet. The air seems charged around us, like lightening swims and dances above our heads. And for that quiet moment, where Inej’s eyes drop from my eyes to my lips, I think I can do it. I think I will do it. I think I will taste her lips and finally know what it’s like to get a taste of a place I will never get to.

I know what you are, Kaz. I am not afraid.

My breath hitches when Inej takes the palm of my hand and places a gentle kiss in the centre. I feel her warm breath against my skin, and it takes every bit of my self-control not to pull away and, at the same time, not to bring her closer and crush my lips to hers.

“Is that what you want?” I ask her.

And Inej’s eyes widen when the hand she kisses moves out of her grip to rest on her face. I trace the full cheeks, the heart-shaped contour of her bones. I touch her bottom lip and she trembles. No answer from her.

I pull away. “Not tonight, Wraith,” I whisper.

She looks relieved and disappointed. I bet I look the same.

“I wish it would be easier for both of us,” she says suddenly, touching the hand that’s on her face.

“Someday.”

The answer seems to surprise her, for she looks up with parted lips.

“Someday it will be easier,” I tell her, no knowing if I’m telling her the truth or not.

It’s the truth I want to believe in. Even if it’s against me. It’s the truth she deserves.

Ever so gently, as gently as I can manage, I take her hand again and place a kiss on top of her knuckles, so slowly. I feel her breathing change, and I’m quick to turn my eyes to her.

“I missed you, Kaz.”

“I missed you too, Inej.”

She rests her head between my shoulder and my chest, and there she stays for the rest of the night.

I dream of sunshine.

***

PART FOUR

 

It’s still raining. 

Inej sleeps in my bed, wrapped up in the sheets, even after I have cleaned myself up and dressed for the day. The pain in the bottom of my chest is impossible, but I have to move. There’s no other option. As tentative as it is to spend the day with her, wrapped in her warmth.

“Kaz.”

I turn to her, gloves in hand.

“Good morning,” she says, stretching her arms out like a cat.

I almost grin. “Morning. Eat.”

I gesture to the plate of waffles on the side table next to her. Inej drags herself up, legs dangling off the bed and then she stares up at me.

“What are you doing?” She says, wide-eyed and sleep still kissing her eyelids and hugging her voice.

“We have work to do, Wraith.”

“You were shot two days ago.”

“Now three.”

She looks exasperated. “Kaz – you’ll rip the stitches.”

“I already changed the bandage,” I say, putting my gloves on. She looks sad at the sight of them, and I ignore it. There are things I need to think about today. “And I’m alright.”

She stares at me. I stare at her.

“What are you made of?” She frowns.

I snort a laugh. “Barrel poison.”

Inej sighs and looks at the plate of waffles. “Did you get those two?”

“You like strawberries right?”

She gives me a look, but eats nonetheless. I watch her watching my wound as if she suspects something of it. “You could have woken me up and we’d eaten together.”

“Like a normal couple?” I muse. Inej gives me a sarcastic nod and I grin.

She looks surprised when I come closer to her. Looking up at me, her mouth full, she blinks when I lean over. I ignore the sting in my skin, the effort it takes to do this small gesture.

“We’ll never be normal people, Inej,” I tell her. And wipe a bit of sugar off the corner of her mouth. Her eyes seem to glow. I straighten. “Eat up. Meet me in the office after?”

“Sure,” she yawns.

I leave with a nod and clutch the side of my body when I’m out of view. I breathe, but breathing makes it worse. Pim passes me in the hall and starts.

“Hey, you’re not dead,” he smiles, patting me on the shoulder.

I grab his arm and push him away, “Go find something to do.”

“I just came from a shift!”

The usual line.

“Didn’t ask.”

The usual line.

“Hey, boss,” he calls when I reach the edge of the stairs.

I turn to Pim, my cane on the first step. “What?”

“Word is that the Wraith is back.”

I pause. “Word is true.”

And say nothing else.

When I reach Haskell’s old office, I find hundreds of papers neatly stacked on the desk. I sit, groaning with the pain, and shift my bad knee accordingly.

A throne for a king.

I sigh.

Something in my gut turned at sitting in this office again. Some childish part of me wants to complain about it, throw a fit that I didn’t get to appreciate waking up so warm after two weeks of waking up in cold sweats. Part of me wants to go back upstairs and hold her again.

But before I can think more on it, Jesper walks through the door, no knocking.

“Surprised to see you alive,” he says, hands at his hips.

“I’m not surprised to see you alive.”

“She’s back.”

I try to avoid the grin from slipping into my mouth but – there it is.

Jesper will give me shit for it I know.

“I told you,” he starts to say.

“Yes, yes I know,” I wave a hand impatiently. “In other news-“

“Jes,” she suddenly says.

Her voice makes my heart beat in my throat. I watch her come in, hair freshly braded, knives strapped to her waist.

“Heya, Wraith,” he says, patting her back. “Good on you keeping the king of the barrel alive.”

“It would be easier to kill the king of Ravka than save this one,” she muses, crossing her arms. Her eyes are playful, provoking me.

I hide a smile behind my gloved hand and stare right at her. “Are you two done? We have work to do.”

“Look at it, do you see it?” Jesper says to Inej.

“Hm,” she mumbles. “Scheming face.”

“It’s back.”

I sigh. “Inej-“

“Boss.”

We all look towards the door – and that sinking feeling in my gut only worsens when I see Anika with bloodshot eyes and blood on her arms.

“What happened?!” Inej moves towards her.

Anika looks only to me, voice shaking. “There’s been an attack on the Crow Club. Stadwatch are surrounding the building as we speak.”

“Who?” I bang my fist on the table, ignoring the pain at my side.

My ears ring when Anika says, “The Dime Lions.”

TO BE CONTINUED...


	3. Roots

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I try to put words to it, to the way he makes me feel when his lips form the shape of my name. I try to understand why my body feels at home in a land that made me miss the word. I try to rip out these roots that grew underneath my feet, keeping me here. And I soon realize that I cannot.
> 
> I’m rooted to the place that drowned me, and to the boy who pulled me out of the water.

It’s strange.

I have missed this so much.

The world hasn’t felt like this in a long time, I think. The wind itself has a different smell, a different taste. The colours multiply in a colourless city. I’m home again.

Home.

The word makes me stop. I try to remember when I started referring to Ketterdam as home.

But this city – this broken, crooked kingdom of a city – whether I had planned for it or not, has become something very close to a home overtime, a house made of chipped wood and shattered glass, familiar yet daunting, kind yet cruel, haunted, even. But home nonetheless.

The tips of my toes balance on the tipped roof, as I watch the dying sun paint the skies with its remaining light. I watch the people close their windows, lock their doors, call their children back inside, to protect themselves from the wolves that stroll these very streets at night.

I turn away from the sight. My body angles itself accordingly, and I check my balance. I lower myself down onto a sitting position and slide down, down, down, until the soles of my boots hit the side of a chimney. I turn once more, hiding myself in its long shadow, smelling the ashes and the smoke, the homemade bread and the dust that settles over my hair.

It’s too early. The monsters have not been let out of their cages yet. So I wait.

I wait until the sun kisses the skies goodbye and the stars take its place. I wait until the streets of Ketterdam are crawling with shadows I know all too well.

My eyes turn upwards, and in my line of vision I see the Menagerie opening its doors wider, playful coloured lights coming out of its windows. I imagine Haleen rounding up the place like the vulture she is, looking for another corpse to pick apart. Her voice seems to ring in my ears – old words, old threats, fresh wounds. A part of me sinks further down onto the chimney’s shadow. My right cheek starts to tingle.

My grip on Sankt Petyr tightens. I hold the hilt close to my chest, and I breathe. I breathe. I remember what I am. What I have become.

Not a prey. But a predator. Not weak. I am fire and water combined. I will burn them down just to drown them all.

And I ready myself to stalk my prey.

***

PART TWO

 

I take two hours to find him.

He walks with the confidence of a man who thinks himself immortal. Elias tips his hat as he walks by a group of men, a cigarette on the corner of his mouth, a smirk to go along with it. The easiness in him – he does not believe he has a target on his back. Or if he does, if there is any suspicion or fear under that scarred skin and polished suit, then he does not show it.

In the sheltered darkness of the roofs, I follow him. Watching him like this, from a distance, up in the sky, it feels like having a glass between us. He turns, I jump from roof to roof. He stops, I stop with him. I watch, I wait. One foot in front of the other. Check balance. One foot in front of the other.

My anger drives me further than I had anticipated. I see the White Rose a few blocks from where he’s standing now. I see the Menagerie get closer and closer as we go. Under my coat and hood, I feel the cold sweats prickle my spine. West Stave opens its cages, and the monsters are let loose.

I take notice of every man he speaks to. I remember every face. Every feature. I look once and look again, watch the men who tremble before him and the men who shake his hand as if he’s an old friend.

Elias stops at a crossroad.

No.

He looks over his shoulder once, scratches the black stubble on his jaw, and walks into the Menagerie.

My feet stop, stuck to the roof. I am unable to move.

Go on. Follow him.

I can’t.

I can’t.

Weak girl. You won’t face your own nightmares.

I close my eyes, take a breath. I bring Sankt Petyr to my chest once more, feeling the warmth of the hilt, and trace the golden swirls with my nail. I let its contours bring comfort, and I will my hands to stop shaking.

Go Inej.

I know how to get in. I know how to infiltrate myself in that building. I know the ins and outs, know each one of the bedrooms like the palm of my hand. Yet I cannot move.

She will never leave you alone until you face this.

My body will not obey.

I realize my legs are trembling.

Not a girl – but a ghost.

I’m breathing like I have lost the ability to. I’m seeing black dots all over my vision. My body settles down on the roof, hidden from view, and I wait. I wait until the feeling passes. I wait until the fear leaves my veins and I’m left with a sinking sensation in the bottom of my stomach that feels an awful lot like disappointment.

Minutes later, I hear voices. My mind races, but I’m up in a second, silently watching once more, like a spider weaving its web. I’m surprised to see Elias out of the Menagerie so quickly. I wonder what else he was there for.

He lights another cigarette and takes a look at his pocket watch. He’s waiting for someone.

That someone comes into view only seconds later, rounding a dark corner. I recognize the man in the blue suit and wavy blond hair to his shoulders. I saw him at the shooting, that day in the harbour. Dime Lion. Elias’ best shooter, or so rumour has it. His bullet almost-

My fingers squeeze the hilt of Sankt Petyr once again. The sky burns red above me.

You hurt him.

There’s nothing I can catch from this conversation. I can’t move any closer, I can’t move at all without being spotted. So I watch.

Elias gestures, his whispers enraged, his cigarette burning away between two fingers. The man lowers his head, sighing in defeat. He tries to explain something, but his boss does not want to hear it. Elias pushes the man down to the floor, a boot on top of his chest, applying pressure. The man chokes and miserably attempts to move away but the grip is too strong as Elias leans his weight on top of his leg, a warning tone marrying his voice.

I catch the words:

“Business is mine. Leave…bullet to his chest.”

The man nods, eager to be left alone. Elias removes his foot from the man’s chest.

And these words I hear clearly. They are spoken loudly.

“And the girl. You understand?!”

My heart beats out of my chest.

I remind myself that my fear is misplaced. I don’t know what he’s talking about or who he means.

The man nods once more, afraid to move. Elias steps back and throws his cigarette carelessly. It lands at the man’s feet.

Conversation over.

I know Elias is done for the night by the way he carries himself to a sleazy looking tavern at the end of the street, one cuddled right beside the White Rose.

I should kill him. I should end his life and the life of the man who dared to try hurt Kaz. My hand itches to just – make the right throw and end his life without a moment’s pause. Saints know he deserves it. They both do. These were the men that blew up the Crow Club, the one Kaz was now rebuilding. These were the men who killed innocent people. These were the men that almost took Kaz away from me.

But I force myself to remember Kaz’s words. I force myself to see the sense in his request. I can almost imagine his voice beside me now, dark and terrible, haunting.

Patience, Wraith. Brick by brick.

Still – it takes everything in me not to throw the knife when his back turns to me. I would not apologize to the Saints if I killed this one man with his back turned. For what he orchestrated, for what he did.

In the end, I lower the knife.

Someday you will call this mercy, Elias. You will beg me to end you when I get my hands on you.

***

 

PART THREE

 

When I climb the window of his bedroom, I find him asleep.

I have never been so unsteady on my feet.

And if I felt at home on the roofs, with my head so close to touching the sky, then being near him like this, with little obstacles-

I take a breath, my body halfway in, my hands clinging to the sides of the window. I might leave. I might just…watch him. Before my own self-awareness makes me realize how wrong that is.

He’s lounging on his desk chair, his hands folded on his lap, his mouth closed. I never see Kaz Brekker like this, and it’s a sight on itself. His hair is tussled, like he’s run his fingers through it countless times in the last hour; his winter coat is disregarded on the side of his bed, leaving him in a clean white shirt, his sleeves rolled up to his elbows, his gloves gone. His suspenders hang at his hips.

My eyes trace his lips. I have seen, time and time again, that mouth cut people in half with his words. I have seen with my own two eyes how Kaz can bring another man to his knees just by a simple command. And yet like this-

He’s a tired young man in a suit.

He has perfectly shaped lips. For a painful moment, I imagine just how it would feel to run my thumb along his bottom lip. I picture it, the parting of his mouth, the focused, ever present hostile glint in his eyes. I see the shadows there too, but they’re no longer dark, but light grey, and soon, someday, they will simply not exist. I see the slow rise and fall of his chest, and I see that gaze softening, as I lower my own mouth to-

“Hello, Wraith.”

If I hadn’t been holding myself to either side of the window, I’m positive I would’ve fallen off. Kaz’s eyes are still closed, his voice soft, edged with sleep. He’d known I was here since the first silent move.

He always knows. He can always tell. I shouldn’t be surprised.

Flustered, I shove the thoughts away, and jump off the window sill, landing silently next to his desk.

“I thought you were asleep,” I say, removing my hood, my back to him. I need to see something other than his mouth. “I was going to turn around and go.”

“No, you weren’t.”

I turn. His eyes are still closed. There’s something on his face I can’t quite place, a feeling close to amusement, and yet not at all that.

“Were you watching me, Inej?” He inquires, opening one eye. His voice makes the hair on the back of my neck rise.

“I was not watching you,” I tell him, removing my own gloves, stretching my fingers, numb from the cold outside. “I was debating whether or not you were really asleep.”

I watch him watching me, and the silence between us is an observation he doesn’t make, left unspoken. His eyes are calling me a liar and I have no willingness to truly contradict him.

“What did you see,” he asks. Softness gone - the steel is back in his voice.

I tell him everything I saw, heard and understood. Given the facts, I go to my own interpretation of dragged out silences and loud whispers, of gestures and actions I took notice. I tell Kaz about the Menagerie, and don’t pretend not to notice the way his eyebrows furrow, the way his eyes darken.

I tell him everything.

Except one of the last things that I heard Elias say.

“And the girl.”

And I don’t know why I keep it to myself, but I do. I finish the report, and let myself sit on his bed, my body sore with exhaustion.

He simply says, after a moment of silence, “Did you see him talking to Haleen?”

I hesitate. “I didn’t follow him in.”

A pause. Another. He looks at me, and I’m afraid I’m going to slip again and turn into a shaking mess once more. I know what Kaz sees. I know what my silence, my unwillingness to go on, means to him. I know he understands.

“He’s planning to do something with the Menagerie,” he states, folding his arms. “We’ll find out.”

We.

“I-“

“If you’re going to apologize for not following him into that building, Inej, don’t,” he says, his voice cutting. “Don’t you dare apologize.”

We look at one another. I tell him, “It was a moment of weakness.”

Abruptly, he gets up from his chair.

I watch him sigh, watch him take a handkerchief out of his pocket and leave it carelessly placed on the desk in front of him. Such normal gestures you’d see in a normal man. But Kaz is anything but. I see his restlessness, his impatience.

“Weakness,” he murmurs. “You will never be weak, Inej.”

And still I say, “I could have faced it-“

“I will never subject you to such a thing – you know that.”

“That’s not what I’m saying at all, Kaz,” I say. “I know you would never…” I turn my face away, watching the window, the world outside embedded in darkness. Autumn is coming to a close, but the winter cold is already here. “I know you would never do that.”

He looks at me, expectant.

I continue, “I wanted to face that. I just-“

“Wraith,” he says. “You will never be weak.”

He walks to me, and I feel as if I might be made of butter. The room is instantly too hot, too small. His eyes are covered in shadows now, those same familiar shadows that swim in the already dark eyes whenever we’re this close. But Kaz doesn’t stop until he stands in front of me.

It always takes me aback – being this close to him. It’s like a forbidden territory we keep crossing, ignoring the warnings etched in the fences and the consequences that could follow. Ignoring everything but the need to feel each other.

I want to reach out and touch him. But the fear in the back of my mind is still very much present, and the images keep resurfacing, their claws around my neck, cutting my breath.

“Was that all you saw?”

I gulp. “Yes.”

He stares at me, and then lowers his eyes. Looks at my hands, clasped together. I think I might die when his indicator touches mine, a silent request. Carefully, I let my fingers slide idly over his, and we’re not looking at each other, we’re looking down, to where our skin touch. His thumb moves back and forth, slowly, gently, on the top of my hand. He’s frowning, but he can bear this. I can bear this.

The events from tonight crash down onto me, like a wave of ice water poured over my head. I feel the unquenchable need to draw closer and closer to him, until there is nothing between us.

He’s searching my eyes now, his head slightly lowered.

“I know Wylan and Jesper told you that you could stay at the Van Eck manor,” he starts, voice hoarse. He’s swallowing down his fears the way I was not able to do tonight. He says, fingers squeezing mine, “But if you want – you can stay with me.”

“And sleep in your bed,” I say slowly.

Hesitance. “Yes.” A pause, where his eyes meet mine and his thumb draws an invisible circle on my palm. “What happened tonight, if you-“

“I don’t,” I say, lowering my eyes. “I don’t want to speak of it. Not now.”

He nods once, looking behind me at the bed. “I can sleep elsewhere.”

I toy with the idea in my head. I call back each time in which I have fallen asleep with Kaz on his bed, our legs and fingers entwined. I call back the way he’d looked at me then, afraid and somehow relieved, and the way he’d made me feel.

I try to put words to it, to the way he makes me feel when his lips form the shape of my name. I try to understand why my body feels at home in a land that made me miss the word. I try to rip out these roots that grew underneath my feet, keeping me here. And I soon realize that I cannot.

I’m rooted to the place that drowned me, and to the boy who pulled me out of the water.

I realize in those short seconds as he looks at me that I would not wish to be anywhere else in the world. I realize that the warmth of him doesn’t wake any sort of alarm in me – but instead, it calms me. I find safety in the arms of Ketterdam’s most dangerous thief. Because out of all the hearts Kaz has carved out and stolen for his own gain, I know that he’ll keep mine safe.

I know it. I knew when I’d whispered those words to him at the Menagerie, the first words I spoke to him – I knew it then. And I knew years later, when he’d brought my parents back to me. I know. And so I tell him, “I don’t mind. Do you?”

He forces the word out. “No.”

“Kaz,” I murmur.

“It just takes me a few moments,” he says, bothered and uncomfortable, his hand tense in mine. “I want- You help.”

The words are confused and half-stuttered. Vulnerability does not come easy to Kaz. But to me, this glimpse of it, small as it may be, means the world.

I smile. “Have you eaten?”

“No, have you?”

“No,” I tell him. And tighten my grip on his hand. “We should be a normal couple and grab some dinner,” I muse, throwing his own words back at him.

For the first time tonight, he smiles. It’s a half-smile, etched with sarcasm, and mockery. And yet it’s a smile, and it’s as tender as it gets. It’s enough to wreck me. “I told you, Inej,” he says, and squeezes my hand. “We will never be normal.”

***

PART FOUR

We eat on the windowsill, our toes touching.

Finished with his food, Kaz watches the wind rattle and whistle outside, the lamps being put out by uniformed men, the last of the monsters getting back onto their cages. When I look up again, his eyes are on me.

“I have a plan.”

“I figured you did.” I nudge his foot with mine. “Let it die for tonight,” I say. “We will deal with it all tomorrow.”

And I know my request goes to his mind and ignored, because Kaz cannot help it. He will dwell on it until the early hours in the morning, scheming to himself, coming up with more plans, more options, more back-ups.

“What will make you stop thinking about it?”

“Killing him.”

“What else?”

“Burying him.”

I finish my food, place the empty dish on his desk. “I don’t have any clothes.”

He looks at me. Swallows once. “Have one of my shirts.”

I look at him.

Kaz is suddenly turning his face away, to the window, but I see the flush on his neck, the tense shoulders. He says, “They should fit.”

And the way he says it too – Of course they’ll fit. Look at your size compared to mine.

“Thanks,” I simply say, not intending to push it.

He looks at anywhere but me. And then, “I will give you some privacy. Clothes are in the second drawer.”

“You can just turn around – you don’t have to leave.”

He does, though, his feet carrying him to the door, his words quickly pouring from his mouth. “I heard Jesper come in minutes ago. I need to discuss something with him.”

The door closes behind him.

The frost clings to the window, painting it in tones of grey and white. I stare at myself, and the girl that looks back at me is not scared anymore, not haunted by memories.

She’s smiling.

***

PART FIVE

 

Kaz’s eyes don’t linger on the shirt I chose when he comes back. Instead he closes the door, walks to his desk, and rearranges papers already neatly piled.

“How’s Jesper?”

“Gone,” he says. “Wylan asked about you.”

Wylan. Sweet Wylan, who has been nothing but kind towards me ever since I came back from Ravka.

“I’ll visit tomorrow,” I tell Kaz, after a pause. And then, “I was thinking of digging through the city records for Elias’ family. For all we know, he’s not a bastard. For all we know, his family information might come in handy someday.”

Kaz is silent for a few seconds, looking down at the papers, his eyes unfocused. “There’s no records of his family,” Kaz says. “I’ve already checked.”

Of course he has.

Always thinking ahead.

Kaz continues, “Unlike you to go that far, Wraith.”

I take in the half smile, the new gleam in his eyes as he looks over at me. I sit on his bed, reclining against the stiff pillows, feeling the strain on my neck.

“We wouldn’t have to hurt his family to get what we wanted from him, you know that,” I say. “Words hurt more than actions sometimes.”

A pause. His body turns to me slowly, hip leaning against the makeshift desk. “I thought you didn’t want to talk about this tonight.”

“I don’t,” I tell him.

I’m very conscious of my exposed legs then. I’m aware of the cold biting at the skin. But Kaz’s eyes are steady on my face, as if trying to see through me once more, as if attempting to read my mind. And it’s as if he does, when he says, “I have some cotton trousers, if you’d like.”

Relief floods through me. “Yes, please.”

And he goes to get them.

It’s irrational, my sudden increased heartbeat. I know it. I know I could be lying naked on his bed, calling his name, and Kaz would not even dare to move close to me. And yet-

Being so close to the Menagerie snapped something in my brain. It is as if I had taken two steps back tonight: not quite at the place where I had been, years before, but now far from the place I managed to reach in the last few months.

I feel like I’m on a tightrope.

I’m standing right between the place where my mind is comforted by being in his presence, and his presence only, and the place where there is nothing else but the memories of a past I have longed to forget. And yet I can’t. I cannot forget. My skin seems to crawl when I lift myself up and take the trousers from Kaz’s hand. My hand is shaking.

“Inej.”

My name on his lips snaps me back to reality.

Kaz is looking at me, waiting. Letting me fight my own battle, yet letting me know he’s there. And despite the panic deep inside me, I manage to let that comfort me. It does. He does.

“It’s alright,” I tell him, shaking my head, dressing quickly. I fold the hem, and tie a knock at my waist to keep the trousers up.

A dark gaze greets me when I look up. “We will burn it down and watch it turn to ashes,” he promises. “And she will burn with it.”

I nod, my throat in knots. “Brick by brick.”

“Brick by brick.”

A pause between us. I sit back on the bed, saying, “There are moments where everything is fine. In others I feel as though I could disappear.”

“I understand,” he says. There’s no need for more. I know he knows, I know he understands – in a different way, but better than anyone else.

I dare to add, “You help too.”

I watch his eyes soften, his jaw losing its tension.

Because I know him. Because there is never anything else behind his words when it comes to me. Because Kaz does not offer me what he cannot. Better terrible truths than kind lies. It is what it is with him – and maybe…maybe that’s what makes me feel safe with being alone like this with Kaz. The fact that there will never be a time when he’s not his real self with me, as he shows me all the sides there are to him. The good and the bad exposed.

I think he’s going to speak, but then he’s grabbing the handkerchief he left on the desk. Kaz sits down on his bed, in front of my crossed legs, and says, “May I?”

I’m nodding before I understand what he’s about to do. My heart expands when he touches his handkerchief to the upper part of my brow. The pressure he applies is so soft I barely feel it on my skin. But his hand, so close to my skin, is enough to send my pulse racing.

“You have dust on your face.”

“You’ve been letting me walk around and talk to you for hours without telling me I have dust on my face?” I say slowly, intimately, in this very small distance between us.

The corner of his mouth lifts slightly. “I have only just noticed, Wraith. And ash, too.”

The soft material moves down my cheek, tracing my jaw. He wipes at the skin in slow, unhurried movements, his eyes focused. He’s not breathing. I’m fascinated with his face this close. I’m fascinated with the sharpness of his jawline, the slightly crooked nose, the faint badly healed scars along his chin-

“You’re staring,” he says.

I blink. “I’ll look at the ceiling if you want me to,” I blurt out, embarrassed to have been called out.

He lowers his hand. “No need,” he says, voice rough. “I like it when you stare.”

This new dynamic between us-

It’s odd how easy and natural it is for us to go from the Kaz and Inej that Ketterdam raised, the ones who plot against the people who did them wrong, to the broken children that find comfort and heal with each other, to…this.

“Are you flirting with me, Kaz Brekker?”

He’s caught off guard, but the surprise flickers in his eyes for only half a second, and then Kaz is searching my eyes, probably looking for any signs of nervousness in my gaze. He finds none.

We can bear this.

“I wouldn’t know what that would sound like, Wraith.”

“It sounds an awful like that,” I smile. Like the boys she’d played with growing up, those children of family friends that stuttered and blushed and gulped around her.

“I’m afraid I have not yet managed to master such a thing,” he says.

“I would say you’re doing quite well,” I tell him. “For someone who has not yet mastered such a thing.”

A breath escapes him, sounding much like a laugh – or as close to that as Kaz Brekker can get.

I wonder how many people, if any, saw him like this. At ease, his shoulders more relaxed, his eyes still weary but less darkened, more serene. I wonder if anyone in the world besides his family had ever known the Kaz who smiles at me, who drags a handkerchief over my skin and tells me I have dust and ash on my face, the one who looks at me like this.

“I don’t need to tell you this,” he says, and I see his expression harden a bit. “But be careful on the streets – when you go to visit Wylan.”

I see that he almost cannot contain the words. Because Kaz knows perfectly well I will make more damage than most, and that I’m not an easy prey to catch. But he intends to make sure I am safe, either way. Especially with Elias now intent on bringing him down.

The smile I give him is gentle. “You protect your investments.”

I say it to spike him, to make him smile, to turn the words into the joke that they now are. But Kaz says seriously, “I protect you.”

A moment’s pause between us, where the words seem to linger in the air, echoing. My knee is touching his. His bare hand, flat on the bed, is so very close to my own, thumb just skimming the side of my thigh.

“We protect each other,” I whisper, feeling out of breath.

His gaze is distant, distracted, disarmed. An open door to his soul, to everything he holds back. I see his fingers twitch from the corner of my eye, see his lips part to say something, yet no words come out; see the way his eyes search mine, asking questions, seeking silent answers.

Instinctively, I move closer – a silent answer.

Kaz’s chest rises up and down slowly, yet unsteadily, and I can almost see his mind working at a million miles per hour, telling him to pull me closer, to push me away. I wonder which one he’ll accept. I wonder which one I will bear.

He licks his lips, swallows once. He murmurs, jaw tense, “Stay still.”

His voice digs itself in my bones, has my eyes fluttering, my heart gaining wings. My breath holds, my mind finds itself calm and collected for the first time tonight. I wait. Once more, I wait.

His eyes lower to my lips, every move intentional, giving me the space to stop him and move away if I wish. I trace every inch of his face, stopping at his lips.

He raises a hand, takes my chin between two fingers. It’s so tender it breaks my heart. His thumb moves over the skin, and I feel the clear contrast between mine and his. Kaz, himself, is a contradiction – full of rough edges, filled with soft spots. He has cold hands.

He’s so close I can feel his breath fan over my lips. I breathe him in, feeling the urge not to pull away, not to tremble, but to move closer still, until I feel the contours of his body against my own, until I feel his arms envelop me in an embrace.

I’m suddenly dreaming about it, craving it. It becomes a need.

I stay very still.

I let him watch me, his eyes running over the shape of my nose, my brows, my cheeks. They stop at my lips once more. I ask myself how long his self-control will last.

“Kaz,” I manage to say, intending to ask him if he was okay, but what comes out of me is only a ragged whisper. A plea.

His eyes raise to me once, so dark, before he leans down.

I’m in shambles.

So very softly, he presses his lips to my cheek, lingering there. I feel him breathe against me. I feel his eyelashes fluttering against my skin, his nose nudging mine. I am not touching him, but I feel his body trembling. I feel the way he’s forcing himself to stay still, to stay put. We are both reminded of another time, months and months ago, when his lips had touched me and he’d crumbled. But he does not want to crumble now. He will not.

He knows the touch of my skin now, knows how it feels to sleep beside me and feel my warmth against his face. He knows my smell and the way I breathe. He refuses to drown.

Too soon, his lips pull away and I’m instantly craving to turn my face and do it to him, taste his skin. Though Kaz stays close, eyes shut, and he breathes. Once. Twice. At the third time, he opens his eyes and looks at my lips again.

“Can I touch you?” I ask, and I’m surprised to hear my voice so low, almost muted.

“Not yet,” he says. “Just let me-“

He takes seconds to gather himself. His hand is still touching me.

“I’m here,” I tell him. “I’m here.”

His brows furrow as if he’s in pain. I hate it. I hate the shadows in his eyes. I want it all to go away, I want to never see him hurt again. It breaks me, tears me in half when he touches his forehead to mine and lets out a quiet, frustrated sound.

“It’s okay,” I murmur. “Go on.”

I could simply lean in. Just a fraction of an inch. Just one turn of my head and I’d be closing the distance between us and see for myself how his lips would feel like against mine, how they’d taste.

His hand moves from my chin to my jaw, cupping my cheek. I lean into the touch, not meaning to, but Kaz stays. He stays. And he is the one to lean in.

My eyes fall shut as I feel his lips at the corner of my mouth. I can hear my heart in my ears, feel it tearing my chest open. Kaz lets out a shaky breath, his eyelashes tickling my cheekbone. We open our eyes and look at each other.

My cheeks burn, and I’m dazed – dazed as if a fever has took me, and it’s going to be a long time before it leaves me. His eyes are so intense they burn into mine. We’ve reached this far without knowing it was possible, and it takes us both a moment to let it sink in, to let our hearts settle, to convince ourselves that it will not be any easier moving forth, but it is a start, nonetheless.

His forehead touches mine once more – a rest. A soothing few seconds.

Kaz. Kaz. Kaz.

His hand slides idly into mine, and our fingers entwine, our palms joined together.

“Inej.”

My name sounds like a prayer from a sinner’s lips. He is begging me for something, and I don’t know exactly what. I don’t know how far I can take this. I don’t know if I want to find out.

I know I can stand it – that much I do know. For now, I will not drown.

He kisses the corner of my mouth again, and I break once more. My hand slides from his hand to his arm, careful to avoid his shoulder. Up and down, so gently, up and down. He’s trembling, but he will not drown, not while I’m here.

“Kiss me.”

The words leave my mouth before I think them through. But I don’t take them back. I don’t want to.

Kaz takes a moment, hesitates, and looks at me. Home is in his eyes. Home, I think, is wherever we make it – and I have found home in his arms.

When he leans down once more, I brace myself. But nothing could have ever prepared me for the light press of his mouth on mine. Nothing in the world could have compared to it. And nothing could have made me predict that I would instantly flinch away, as if I had been burned.

My back hits the wall, the old mattress creaking under us. I only realize what has happened when my eyes focus on his – and they are wide and fearful, guilty even. He opens his mouth to ask-

“I’m sorry,” I say, clasping my hands together to stop them from shaking. I asked him for it, and yet I couldn’t even bear it-

Kaz looks as if he’s dreaming, his face stunned. And then it’s all gone, and I’m left looking at him furrowing his brows, shaking his head.

“You have to break that habit,” he says, his tone stern.

“What?”

“Apologizing for things that are not your fault,” he says. “For things you can’t help.”

“I asked you to-“

“It doesn’t matter,” he cuts in. “You owe me nothing, Inej.”

You owe me nothing.

My chest is burning. I want to crawl out of my own skin, leave this body behind, leave the nausea and the panic behind with it.

“Brick by brick,” he says.

And the words take a new meaning.

“How are you…feeling?” I ask cautiously.

Like he wants to take a bath, I’m sure. I know, because I feel the same. A years’ traumas would not be erased in one night, no matter how long we held on and no matter how long we tried to push them down or ignore them. It was a process. Brick by brick.

He pauses in this new territory, attempting to put words to his feelings. One hand runs through his hair, and I don’t think I imagine the pride in his eyes, the triumph. “Exhilarated.”

And despite the aching memories, I offer him a smile. I still feel the touch of his lips, feel it burning my mouth. If I had silenced my mind-

“I want to know I didn’t do anything to trigger you,” he says, very plainly, very seriously now. “And if I did, I want you to tell me so I don’t repeat it.”

My smile only widens at the gentleness in his voice. “You didn’t trigger anything, Kaz. You are-“

I don’t finish – I don’t have the words for him. For us. I lick my lips, fighting another crooked smile. My heart settles. Safe. Safe.

“One word for you and I will never do it again.”

“I know,” I murmur. Testing the waters and our own limits, I take his hand again. I know it for the comfortable gesture that it is now. “But I want you to do it again. I wanted you to.”

He swallows down. It’s a long time before he speaks again, looking down at my fingers as he entwines his hand with mine. “I want to do it again, too.”

And the way he admits it – softly, under his breath. Tense and yet…more at ease. Turns out that breaking each other’s walls isn’t that difficult at all. The hardest thing is destroying our own.

“Sleep,” he says, rubbing my hand.

“Do you want to sleep?”

“No, Wraith. I want to stare at you for as long as I am allowed to live,” he says, voice low.

“Not kiss me?”

“And kiss you,” he adds, “And run my fingers through yours. Touch you.” 

A pleasant shiver runs down my spine. His voice is like rough stones.

A minute goes by. Two. Three. I take his hand, open it with mine. My palm is flat against his, and then my fingers are counting the lines, the faint scars, the bumps and bruises. I take his hand and lead it to my lips.

He inhales sharply, yet slow somehow, as if bracing himself. I let my lips linger, my eyes on his. Little gestures to get used to, to make us familiar with one another. Gesture that go a long way.

“It will be uncomfortable to sleep in that,” I say, lowering our hands and pointing to the clothes he wears.

A moment of silence.

And then, “Do you mind?”

I shake my head, pulling back from him. “Go ahead. Do you want me to look away?”

He lifts himself up, and I watch him go through his drawer. In the back of my mind, I wonder how many nights Kaz has the time to change clothes and get actual sleep. I wonder how many times he arrives at the slat to just plop himself down on his bed, out of need, and just sleep in his day clothes for one hour or two. Does he get nights where he’s simply sleeping and resting because he wants to?

“No,” he says. “You can watch.”

Silence. Realizing what he said, he quickly adds, “You know what I mean.”

I stifle a laugh, smiling to myself.

“Come here,” I say.

Curiously, he peaks over to me, his clothes in his hands. Kaz approaches me slowly, his figure towering over me, questions in his eyes. Taking a breath, reminding myself who I am and what I’ve accomplished, I raise myself on my knees, on his mattress.

“Can I help you?”

A pause. Two, three, four, five seconds pass. Kaz nods once, eyes on me.

Another deep breath. Kaz Kaz Kaz.

I remind myself I have seen his bare chest. I know what it looks like, and I know the scars that linger there. It’s not any different. And yet – not at all the same, because the air around us has changed drastically, and I can feel the goosebumps rise on my skin when my fingers touch the first button of his shirt.

I undo it.

Another. And another. And as I go down, I am not fearful. I can feel his heat through his shirt, and I can smell him so close. And it’s not difficult to remind myself that this is Kaz. Kaz.

I unbutton his shirt, leave it open. I look up, unsure.

“Go on,” he says, voice strained.

I hesitate, knowing his shoulders are not a good spot for him to be touched. Here and there I see the signs of the battle he’s fighting with himself – I just want him to realize that he no longer has to fight alone. 

So without much more hesitance, I peel his shirt off his shoulders, careful not to let my hands linger too much on his skin, and drag the fabric down his arms. It falls to the floor.

He’s paler on his chest than he is on his face. Kaz is not usually this bare.

I almost get an urge to run my hands over his arms, to feel the hard, lean muscles underneath my palms, trace his tattoo with the tips of my fingers. But I don’t. Something to face another night, I tell myself.

Clearing his throat, Kaz throws a knitted shirt over his head. It’s not the first time I’ve seen him with it on, or with the casual trousers he puts on afterwards. But it still makes me feel taken aback to see him out of a stiff suit, without his cane, without his gloves. Without everything that makes him Dirtyhands.

I get myself under the covers, sliding over close to the wall, as closer as I can get. He blows out the candle, and the room embraces the darkness. I feel the mattress shift beside me, the covers lifting slightly, and he’s next to be, breathing.

He says, after a long time, “If it bothers you-“ And stops. He tries again, “If you’re not comfortable, you don’t have to stay.”

I dare to turn and face him. I can only see his silhouette in the darkness of his room, but I feel him breathe against me, and the warmth of him lulls me to sleep. “Can I move closer?”

“Yes,” he whispers, seemingly breathless.

And I do – slowly, testing him, seeing how far he will allow me to go. How far I’m willing to go. I stop when our thighs touch, when my forehead touches his chin.

“You can hold me, if you want.”

I speak the words against his skin, my eyes shut. I’m tired, so tired, my body begs me to rest, and yet I can only be aware of his arms snaking around my body, so careful.

We stay like that for a long time. And at the end of that time, I finally breathe. And he finally breathes. I understand the struggle it must be for him, too, and I can only think that maybe my presence, or me being this close to him, is more comforting to Kaz than having to face his own memories by himself.

I smile to myself.

I’m home.

And before sleep takes me, I tell him, “I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else in the world but in your arms, Kaz.”

I fall asleep with the faint memory of his smile against the darkness.

***

PART SIX

 

I wake up cold and with the dreary, unexplainable feeling that something is horribly wrong.

The room is silent save for the rain smashing against the windows. When I reach out, I find that the bed is empty, and that it’s morning, and that Kaz has left.

Something ticks in the back of my mind. I’m up in a second.

I don’t take long to dress and to make my way downstairs. Jesper is nowhere to be seen. The Slat isn’t busy, with few Dregs lying around either sleeping last night’s events, or lounging about, talking. I ask every single one of them if they know where Kaz went and when did he leave. I get a head shake every single time.

And still my mind ticks. I have no idea where he could have gone to, but the sinking feeling in my stomach is very much real.

I find Pim on my way out. I ask him the same thing, my voice casual, my mind panicked. He says:

“Why you here so early, Wraith?”

“That’s not what I asked you.”

“I don’t know where Brekker is,” he shrugs. I consider kicking him on his bad leg, still bound by bandages. “Why?” He asks. “What’s up?”

“Do you know when he left?”

“Uh…” He takes a long time. I bite the inside of my cheek, so hard I feel a metallic taste. “’Bout an hour or so ago.”

I start conjuring scenarios in my head – places and people run around in my mind like a hurricane. I see Pim leaning against the doorframe, a lazy smile on his lips.

He drawls, “So…how long you here for?”

Rolling my eyes, I step under his arm and leave for the streets, my hood up.

“Okay,” he calls after me. “Nice talk!”

I try to make sense of the feeling that comes over me. I don’t take long to figure it out - that anxiousness biting at me, urging me to move.

There has to be a reason why Kaz did not tell me where he was going so early. After all, this is my fight too. He would have woken me up at the crack of dawn, he would have needed me for a job against the Dime Lions, against Elias. Whatever he’s doing…

Whatever he’s doing, Kaz never planned to tell me in the first place.

And whatever he’s doing – he needs a sharpshooter for it.


	4. Water

INEJ  
PART ONE

He slips into bed and doesn’t hold me.

He believes I am asleep.

He believes that I don’t know.

He believes that I don’t know why his hands are shaking so much. He believes I don’t smell the blood on him.

Seconds and minutes go by and he’s barely breathing next to me. The sun will be rising in a few hours, and when it does Kaz will open his eyes and look at me with a mask over his face, pretending, a fortress held high and strong, and he will keep believing that I don’t know.

I do know.

I know what Dirtyhands went to do tonight. And I know he did it because of me.

Kaz turns towards me, and I feel his breath at the back of my neck, so, so close, so impossibly close he could simply lean down and kiss me there if he wanted to. If he could.

A shiver runs down my spine. I sense his sudden change in breathing, his sudden stillness, the air around him change, because he now knows that I’m awake.

My voice eventually decides to find me again. “Hold me?”

He’s silent. So, so still. Slowly, as if giving himself and I the time and space to pull away.

Neither of us does.

And then he decides that the need to touch me is bigger than his fear of drowning.

The moment his arm snakes around me, it’s both an undoing and one single breath of relief. He pulls me closer, and my back touches his clothed chest. One second where he hesitates. And then one hand is splayed on my stomach, the other going underneath the pillow we’ve shared for the past month.

I count his breaths. He counts mine.

He wants to pull away so badly.

I know – because I do, too.

And yet-

And yet I can swallow that fear rising in my throat. I can ignore the way that my skin crawls when I take a breath and take in the smell of him (past the blood and the smoke and dirty streets, he smells like rooftops and night air, like soap and river water. Like Kaz). I take in the feel of the scratchy sheets (not satin, not gossamer). I take in the sounds around me, his slow breaths, the mattress as his body shifts behind me, the comforting silence (not bells, not groaning, not crying).

Kaz. Kaz. Kaz.

I am so afraid for him, afraid for us.

I am so afraid for myself, for feeling this much.

And yet I still turn in his arms, I still open my eyes and take in the contour of his cheekbones, the sharp line of his jaw, the slight crook of his nose, the cut that never fully healed at the bottom of his mouth. My gaze traces his silhouette in the darkness, and I feel him breathing against my forehead. He’s looking down at me.

How do I tell him that I see stars behind my eyelids whenever he holds me?

How do I tell him that my heart burns whenever he looks at me like this?

How do I tell him that I want him, that I can – and will – fight the fears in the back of my mind to be with him?

I might have tipped my head up and kissed him, if I had been brave enough.

He might have wanted me to.

But in the end, I lower my head to his chest, and I let his erratic, chaotic heart send me to a dreamless, peaceful sleep.

***

PART TWO

He stirs, and I wake.

I hear the sound of angry rain and see the pale glow of a day filled with rainclouds, and I’m tempted to ask him to stay with me in this sort of paradise and hell that we found with each other.

Kaz Brekker makes me lazy.

I have not known many early mornings since I have shared this bed with him, and I cannot will myself to feel ashamed of it. I’m tired, I realize. And I want his warmth against me for as long as I can possibly have it.

An impossible wish. If I open my hands, this crow will spread his broken wings and face the rain.

When I lift my head from his chest, he’s staring out the window like he dreads the world outside of this bed, outside of my arms, as much as me. When I raise myself on my elbow, his gaze turns to me, and I’m tempted to smile.

Nobody, I realize in this fleeting moment, has ever seen him as I am seeing him now, with his hair falling over his forehead, his cheeks puffy and eyes covered with sleep – or lack of it.

I am in wonder.

Those coffee black pools show me things nobody has ever showed me before the moment I raise a tentative hand, and let the back of my two fingers push those strands away from his eyes. The pieces curl slightly at the ends. He lets out a gentle breath, blinks slowly, lazily, and the way his lips tug at the corner makes my heart ache.

His softness destroys my fortress.

And I destroy his when I bring my lips to his.

I feel him blink his surprise away, and feel the slight jolt going through him. But a second later his bare hand is holding mine on top of his chest, right where his heart lies, and I feel as if I might be dreaming, floating through time.

For only a moment, I melt.

The Saints, I think, have never known the taste of this sinner’s lips, because if they had they would have never damned him.

It’s clumsy, and too slow, and our noses bump into each other. My hand trembles and he holds it tighter. As if he, too, is clinging to me for dear life.

And then Kaz opens his mouth with mine.

Tentative, and so, so slow. I don’t know my own name anymore.

I don’t know who I’ve become the moment I feel his shaking breath against me. He’s hot, scalding, and my nails dig into his palm because I want to burn for the rest of my life.

Kaz. Kaz. Kaz.

My hair falls on his forehead as he turns his face. One kiss on the corner of my mouth, sweet as a freshly picked apple. Another on my chin, just a press of his mouth to my skin.

My heart is beating out of my chest.

Kaz looks up just once. He’s here, and I’m here, and neither of us are running away. Not this time.

Shakily, I do the same – one kiss on the corner of his mouth, and his eyes flutter closed. I touch my nose to his, and this time I’m brave. When I kiss him again, goosebumps raise all over my arms.

He’s not drowning.

I’m not sinking.

I might damn the whole world for him.

And I’m terrified at how that thought does not terrify me at all now.

I pull back slowly for a breather, my forehead against his, our breaths together, our hands joined. Kaz’s eyes are closed, and he’s pulling himself together slowly, and I hold him impossibly tight, not permitting the waters to take him from me. And they remain closed when he takes my hand and kisses each one of my knuckles.

I watch, breathless.

Sweat gathers at both of our foreheads, but we are here, and we are not leaving.

We are not drowning.

Never sinking. Ever again.

At least not on our own.

***

PART THREE

“There was an empty box at the warehouse.”

He turns his back to the window to face me, to face those words.

His suit is immaculate, his hair brushed. Kaz holds his cane like it’s a weapon, like he might push away the question in between the lines of my words.

“You went back,” he says flatly.

I sit back in his – our – bed, fully dressed now, knives strapped back where they belong. I watch him watching me.

“I didn’t have to go back.” I don’t tell him the rest of the story. I don’t tell him how I pretended to crawl out the window after my goodbye, only to watch him leave. Only to crawl inside once more, and to find exactly what I had been looking for.

His eyes flash to me – not anger, but something close to it. And I know that it is not directed at me.

Kaz says slowly, “I dealt with it.”

“Kaz.”

“I dealt with it.”

I hate it. I hate it all. I hate when he turns his back to me, facing the world outside as if he’s preparing himself to go into battle. I hate the heaviness I see on his shoulders, and I hate the distance that that places between us.

“Who did you kill, Kaz.”

“Leave it, Inej.”

“I am not asking.”

Something in my tone makes him look over his shoulder. There is nothing of the man that held me minutes ago, the one that kissed me. He’s cold, and brutal. Dirtyhands greets me.

“I agreed to stay,” I begin, my voice a murmur, “I agreed to remain here so we could work together, Kaz. I did not stay here to be pushed into a corner.”

“You-“

“I’m not finished,” I tell him.

The silence hangs heavy between us. I lift myself up, my body heavy from a morning spent in his arms and in his warmth, pace the room to shake the cold from my bones. Kaz watches me like he’s just seeing me for the first time.

“What was in the box, Kaz.”

Again – not a question.

Kaz drags his eyes back to the grey skies, his profile hard as stone. “A note.”

“And what else.”

“Nothing else.”

A pause.

My heart hurts.

I know – I know he’s not doing this to make me feel useless. I know he’s trying to protect me as I am trying to protect him.

But it feels as if he’s letting go of me.

“You have never sheltered me before,” I say quietly. “Not like this. If there was a job, you wouldn’t even look at me twice before turning your back. I came out of it alive everytime. Do you think that changes just because I’m sharing your bed now?”

Brutal, honest words. The only thing Dirtyhands understands.

Kaz narrows his eyes. “Do you truly believe I simply turned my back on you whenever you left, Inej?”

“I never gave you any reasons to doubt me. What I could do.”

“Doubt you,” he breathes, and then a shake of his head. His cane thumbs to the ground softly as he turns, the wood groaning beneath his feet. “I kept tabs on you. Every damn time. And I choked with fear, Inej. Fear that you wouldn’t come back.”

My back straightens at his honesty, at the emotion bubbling in his eyes.

He continues, his face harsh, “There was nothing else in the box.”

“Who did you kill last night?” I breathe.

“The messenger,” he replies. His first truth.

Another pause, another moment when he stares at me and I stare at him and we both see the lies each one of us tells.

I choked with fear, Inej. Fear that you wouldn’t come back.

“Are you that afraid I might leave, Kaz Brekker?” I raise my eyebrows at him, and walk to him.

Kaz’s body stills, as if bracing himself. His eyes change as he takes me in, walking towards him, just four steps away – three, two, one. None. He’s barely breathing.

I trace every feature I know all too well, every bruise and cut committed to memory.

I tell him, “I have seen you as you are and I am not leaving.”

He swallows visibly.

One block of ice down. I’m willing to shatter some more, just to see that warmth back in his eyes.

“Protect me if you want. Keep tabs on me if you must,” I say, my hand trailing over the lapel of his jacket. He struggles to keep still, and I struggle to keep myself on this earth. “Don’t you ever, Kaz,” I murmur, “try to keep me in the dark.”

He’s without words as I lean up on my toes, and touch my lips to his. A brief, chaste kiss, and nothing like what we’ve shared this morning, but it stills him in place. It still leaves me tingling. I can’t get over the feel of his lips on mine. But I’m already overstepping my luck and overestimating my own ability to keep to the surface, so I pull back.

My hand falls from his jacket.

He lets out a breath.

“Promise me.”

“Only you would take the word of a thief and hold on to it,” he says lowly, a whisper between his lips.

“I take your word,” I tell him. “Not the bastard of the Barrel’s word. Yours.”

Kaz’s eyes trace my lips.

“So give it to me,” I whisper.

Maybe it’s the way I say it, or the words themselves that unleash him. And before I know it, he has a hand on my waist and another tangling in my hair, and his cane falls to the floor with a loud thump.

I forget about Elias and about the Black Tips and about the Dime Lions and this forsaken city that wants us dead. I forget about Haleen and the dregs, I forget that the man that has my heart in my hands has lied to me.

I forget.

I let go.

He’s never kissed me this way.

You’re pushing it, the voice tells me.

You will drown, it growls.

I don’t associate anything with his lips. I let myself be, and feel, and smell and taste, let the softness of his lips on mine erase the last five years of my life, only temporarily. I let him tip my chin back, let his gloved hands trace the underline of my jaw and reach the back of my ear. I’m water and he’s a man dying of thirst.

My hands stay planted on his chest, between his pockets.

Underneath it all, I feel the strain of his body against my own. I feel his hands beginning to shake. I feel him crumbling, and trying so hard to hold on to that thin rope that keeps him alive.

And I feel myself crumble with him.

I see blood on white sheets.

I see primal smiles and hands too big.

I feel nails digging into my thighs and teeth biting into my neck.

It is all whisked away a second afterwards – all warmth, all feelings of desire or love or anything good and beautiful I might feel.

All in the space of one second.

I push at his chest, turning my face away from him. It’s so fast that he almost falls into me, and has to hold himself onto the edge of his desk to regain his balance.

Kaz’s eyes are shining bright as he stares down at me, as we both stand there breathless, close and yet not touching.

Nausea crawls its way up my stomach.

“Inej,” he murmurs. 

I shake my head, I close my eyes.

Fight it.

Shut it off. Shut it off.

I can’t.

Not this time.

It’s too fresh in the back of mind.

I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t think.

I vaguely hear him call my name, but my back slides down, down, down the wall, and I hit the ground.

I have not cried in a long time.

My head is in my arms, and I can’t take enough air into my lungs. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe.

I always take two steps forward, and it sends me three steps back.

He’s apologizing to me and I’m not sure why. He’s saying something else too, but I can’t hear him over my sobs. I can’t hear or see anything else but them-

I need a thousand baths to get rid of this feeling. I need the water to take me.

“Inej. Inej.”

You promised yourself you wouldn’t remember.

You promised you’d shut it off.

My sight focuses on his face. Kaz has kneeled, and his eyes are wide, watching me.

“Breathe,” he says. “I’m sorry,” he says. “Breathe with me,” he says. “I’m so sorry.”

I want to ask him why he’s apologizing, but the words don’t leave my mouth. Nothing but sobs leave my mouth.

He does not reach for me, and I’m thankful. I might die.

“Inej,” he says, so gently. This is the voice that I know. The voice that has sent me to sleep for many nights, the voice that fills my heart with joyful trembles.

“Look at me,” he pleads. “Please, look at me.”

Shut it off, Inej.

It’s over.

I do. I look at him.

Coffee black eyes. Twin freckles on his right cheek, a faint bruise on his neck, a cut on his lip. A line going straight down on his eyebrow. A small red mark on the underside of his jaw. Kaz. Kaz. Kaz.

“Breathe,” he says. And hands me something.

A knife. 

Sankt Petyr. The feel of the handle on my palm allows me to take a breath, and two, and another one. I start to feel the floor underneath me again. The noise slowly leaves my mind.

“Breathe,” he repeats, slow and soft, like I’ve never heard him before.

I take in a shaky breath.

All panic is replaced with sadness.

“I want this to leave me,” I tell him, my voice trembling all over. “I want to be able to feel-“

I clutch the knife to my chest, the knife he gave me, my protection these years. My shield.

Kaz nods, “I know, Wraith. I know.”

I’d spent nights with him like this. Telling him to breathe. Soothing away his nightmares, assuring him that he’s not drowning, that the water will not take him. We’d spent nights unable to sleep, just talking as the hours passed by, comforted in each other more than anything else.

He tells me to breathe, like I’ve told him, and I breathe. I breathe. I breathe.

I shut it off. As much as I can.

“I’m sorry,” he says again, and he looks heartbroken.

I close my eyes. Whisper, “You didn’t do anything.”

“It was an impulse, I won’t ever-”

“Don’t say that,” I breathe, my nails digging into the golden handle. “Don’t say you won’t, we won’t.”

I wipe the tears with my free hand, willing the shaking to stop.

I tell him, taking gulfs of air, one at a time, “I want to heal, Kaz.”

He’s a hopeless boy, in love with a ghost, not knowing what to do as she cries.

And I’m a ghost attempting to keep holding on to a crow as I continue, “I want to heal with you.”

“I don’t want to hurt you like this,” he says, so hopelessly.

How the air has changed. So, so quickly.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” I tell him, Sankt Petyr against my heart.

Incredible, hopeless sadness.

“I want to believe that it’s possible,” I say, my voice calmer, my heart heavy.

And, to my utter shock, it’s Kaz who says, “It is.”

I stare at him.

A glimmer of light in all that hopelessness. I wouldn’t have believed it to come from him.

He sits on the floor, his cane forgotten, his hair falling over his eyes again. “There will be a time for us, Inej,” he says, his back resting against the wooden leg of his desk.

“And until then?” I ask.

His foot nudges mine. I am here, that gesture says. Always here.

He murmurs, “We keep breathing.”

***

PART FOUR

I hear the plans.

I add to the plans.

And then I watch them all.

Kaz, with his back straight and his limp forgotten, walking around the table to point out the right place to strike the Dime Lions. Jesper, face grave, his hands paused at the pistols on his hips as if they bring him assurance. Anika, arms crossed, and staring at Kaz with a calculating look I know all too well. Pim at her side, looking eager. Wylan, looking green in the face, but not as much as he used to, nodding to Kaz’s words.

They’re planning an attack. A silent one. One that will wreck that gang.

The rumors on the streets had been wrong all along. Ever since I returned to Ketterdam I heard the same things being whispered in the canals. Dirtyhands had not returned.

He’d never left.

And I saw the same conviction in his eyes as he schemed. I saw that same fire, that ambition and cleverness and astuteness in the way that he moved. I heard it in his voice.

He wanted to end this. Once and for all.

He wanted to crown himself king.

And he would – I knew that he would.

But I had some ties to knot myself.

Elias had not responded after Kaz killed his messenger, and that could only mean one thing: he was preparing for the same damn thing.

Rid that city of the rats, Inej.

I will, papa.

I sat, and I listened, and I spoke.

And when his eyes locked with mine, I put my fortress up.

That night, I couldn’t bring myself to stay with him.

I touched his hand when they left, the rope around my throat still too tight, and he’d hung his head in understanding. There were no words needed. I would come back when I was ready, when I was able to shut this down.

Until then – Wylan’s.

Truthfully, I could have stayed with Kaz. I could’ve found the comfort in his voice, in his touch. His bed was big enough for me to lie down without having to touch him.

But it was so much easier to crawl out the window of Wylan’s mansion.

The night smelled of tragedy. The roofs were still wet after the day’s rain, and it was an effort not to let my soles slip as I kept to the shadows’s shadows. The darkest of places, so I could become the ghost, so I could become the spider weaving its webs. So I could be invisible.

I had been spying him for weeks. I knew his hiding places.

He didn’t know mine.

He wouldn’t be at the Tavern tonight, because it was not crowded enough on a Monday night. Not enough people to bet with. Not enough people to play cards with. Not enough people to be covered, to be safe. He was still a smart man.

He had three apartments in the city, each one of different dimensions. He rotated between them. A safety measure.

Not from me.

I got it right on the second try – his apartment on the warehouse district sits idly between two crumbling buildings that look like they’re tilting to the sides. The windows are all barred with grids. The rust clings to them. Too bad that it clings to the screws too.

I manage to keep my thighs tight on the drain pipe, one hand on the bars keeping me balanced. The drop below isn’t too high, and I’ll survive it if I come to slip, but the noise will be unfortunate. At least for what I was planning to do.

With my free hand, I take out Sankt Petyr. With the sharp edge, I begin undoing the screws. Slowly, patiently. Silently. The darkness doesn’t help, and the lack of light from inside the house doesn’t do me any favours, but I manage. I manage like I always have.

One screw drops to the floor, and the rusted metal groans softly. A pause. My thighs burn, and I keep twisting the knife. Twist, twist, twist. Two more.

My free hand clings to the window ledge. I smell smoke coming out of the chimney, and I breathe it into my lungs. The sound of the water in the canals calms me, for some unknown reason. Maybe it’s the smell that calms me. Reminds me of Kaz.

The screw becomes loose, it falls. A pin-like noise on the wet cobbled ground. My forearm now rests against the ledge, while my hand holds on to the bars. My right hand clings to the pipe. I brace myself. Count to three. Slowly, I let the metal bars rest against the wall, hanging only by one screw. Enough space to let me in.

Two, three, four, and then five seconds pass. I’m inside his house.

It’s warm, and it smells of warm bread.

I’m standing in his bedroom, covered in darkness. Underneath the door I see a trail of candlelight.

I rest my burning cheek against the door, listening. I try to look for footsteps, for any kind of movements. And then I hear it.

My breath holds, my back glues itself against the wall as the door flies open.

I stare at the white wood as someone comes into the room with only one candle. I know it is not him. It’s soft, that walk. He doesn’t walk like that.

I make myself small between the door and the wall, and from the corner of my eye I see a servant woman leave a neatly folded pile of night clothes at the end of the bed. The moment she leaves and closes the door, I’m listening once more.

Nothing.

Silently, I open the door, and keep myself to the shadows.

The staircase does not groan underneath my feet as I walk.

And Elias does not hear it when I come inside his living room.

His back is to me, and he’s sitting at a small table in the corner of the room, writing a letter. A cup of steaming hot tea sits by his arm. He writes with his left hand. His gun is sitting on the side table, too far from his reach. I don’t doubt he has another one on him.

“Neida, bring me my other feather.”

Before he realizes that I’m not his servant, I’m standing by him.

Before he turns, I take out the bracelet from my pocket. Place it in front of him.

I lean over him, and I whisper, “Remember me?”

He goes still, ink dripping from his feather.

He’s staring at that bracelet. The one he sent to Kaz to taunt him. The one Elias took from me.

I could kill him for it, I realize. I could kill Elias for all the things he took from me that night.

He regains his voice. Raises his hands in mock surrender. Says, amused, his voice sultry, “Wasn’t sure if you remembered me, little lynx.”

“I remember,” I murmur. “I remember all too well.”

Sankt Petyr and Sankta Lizabeta are in my hands the moment Elias pulls his gun out of his jacket.

He strikes first.

TO BE CONTINUED


	5. Sinister

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I hear the words echoed in dark corners and empty streets.
> 
> The Wraith’s back.
> 
> Dirtyhands has his spider on his lap again.
> 
> I repeat them to myself. Swallow down the anger that makes me livid, that makes me reckless. I swallow the words right down along with the need to draw more blood. Ketterdam’s streets are already flowing with it.
> 
> I wash my gloves, leave the water red. When dawn arrives, I make a move. Inej is going to be waking now, and realize that I have left her side. She will come to find me. I make sure I leave no trace of last night’s events for her to find.
> 
> When I take the streets again, the sun rising in the red skies, the whispers change. I put my gloves back on. I let the words guide me.
> 
> Did you hear?
> 
> Did you see the blood?
> 
> Dirtyhands is back.

KAZ  
PART ONE

She talks when she sleeps.  
I’ve grown used to it now, though the first two times when I had her like this, so close to me and dozed off into her own dreams, I had been certain that she’d been awake and talking to me. Then I had listened closely to those gentle murmurs and whispered strings of words, attempting to try and figure out what her mind was showing her in her sleep. For all the nonsensical words I’d heard from her, I was stunned to find my name to be one of them.  
She spoke it slowly, whenever my body adjusted itself on the mattress or when her own body turned to find a more comfortable position against me. It’s strange, incredibly stunning – how you can learn more about a person when they’re asleep, rather when they’re awake. And I – I have learned plenty.  
Inej liked to sleep on her stomach. She always placed her arms underneath her pillow, no matter if she had to stretch them in the morning to get rid of the pain and stiffness. Her hand always found some part of me to cling to. When she didn’t pull away from me abruptly in the middle of the night with a gasp, she clung to me. During the good hours, when the monsters didn’t haunt her. She held me. My arm, my hand, my shirt – whatever she could reach.  
Today, I wake with her half on top of me.  
It takes me several moments to realize it. It takes me several more to calm myself down, to tell my mind to be still and take in her warmth, her smell, instead of clinging to the dark waters. She’s so warm against me. Her hand is placed against my heart, and it beats for her in return. My cheek presses against her forehead, and as sleep leaves me, I breathe, I breathe, and I breathe some more. Torn between wanting to push her off me and wrap myself in her arms, I lay still in that contradiction, my eyes struck to the window on the opposite side of the room that shows me a grey day with crying skies.  
She stirs. My eyes turn to watch her – mainly to distract myself, but partly curious to see her like this. I cannot find an answer as to why her sleeping form is so fascinating to me, but it is. And I cannot, will not, look away.  
My heart does the same strange thud when her fingers tighten on my shirt, when she lets out a little noise at the back of her throat.  
It breaks me in half, that sound.   
I couldn’t have imagined in a thousand, a million years even, that she could ever make that sound – a small sigh and a hum of pleasure to go along with it. It ignites something deep within me, something I had stopped myself from feeling for her so long ago.  
I have things to do. I remind myself that the monsters outside are waiting for me, and I have to feed them. But leaving her-  
I’m not sure how long I will stand being this close to her, or if there will ever be a time when my mind is so at ease as it is at this moment in time. So I allow myself this, and only this. I allow myself only a few minutes of the heaven I didn’t have permission to go to, of the heaven that found me instead.  
Her breath fans over my neck, the moisture on my skin tensing every muscle on my body, and yet-  
And it yet it makes me feel like my bones are melting all the same. Inej sighs once more, and murmurs something I can’t quite understand.  
I realize it’s Suli.  
I know enough to recognize the long vowels and tilting sounds, the melody of her language. She says it again, slower, a mumbled group of words my brain can’t process, and I decide it is my favourite sound in the whole wide world. I look her over, hoping she’ll say it again.   
“Kaz,” she mumbles instead, and the world is changed.  
It feels wrong, somehow, for me to have the privilege to see her like this. It feels as if I’m intruding on something too beautiful, and my eyes are too undeserving, and my mind too sinister for this kind of vision. I tremble just at the sight of her, at the parting of her mouth, at the feel of her breath this close.  
“Inej.”  
I don’t know why I say it. Her name falls out of my lips and I can’t help it. My hand moves to push away that strand of hair that falls over her face and makes her crinkle her nose. I’m careful not to touch skin. She is…  
Inej. Inej. Inej.  
My mind screams something at me. Something I’m not ready to acknowledge, to face, yet. She is a tsunami coming straight for me, and for the first time in my life I want to drown.  
PART II  
Footsteps.  
That vision of heaven fades away to grey, and my eyes turn to the door of this room. I have to move, and it suddenly dawns upon me how truly close I am to her. I’m all too aware of how her leg feels pressed into mine, how it feels to have her lips this close to my neck, breathing me in. I’m clinging to a single string of rope, and it’s close to breaking me apart.   
She suddenly turns to her other side, legs stretching out on the mattress. Both relief and disappointment linger in my gut as I hear her soft snoring, now so far away from me. I roll off the bed without her even stirring. For someone who walks as lightly as a bird, she sure sleeps as heavily as a rock.  
I get fully dress in time to hear Jesper’s voice outside. Before he can knock on the door, I leave the room, and the girl that sleeps in my bed.  
Jesper quirks his eyebrows up when I take my time shutting the door behind me, though my frame hides her from sight. I’m embarrassed now, even though I have no real reason to, as he stares up at me, analysing, connecting dots.   
He has a shit-eating grin on his face as he says, “She’s in there, isn’t she?”  
“Walk,” I tell him, my cane silent as I wake my way down the stairs.  
“Inej has not shown up at Wylan’s,” Jesper says matter-of-factly, his smirk intact on his face. “And I’m sure she wouldn’t rent a room somewhere when she has the comfort of your loving arms-”  
My crow head of my cane pushes into his chest, and his back presses against the wall. Jesper’s smirk widens as I near him, anger striking at me like lightning. “You will keep your mouth shut about this. Understand?”  
“No need to be so rigid about it, Kaz,” Jesper rolls his eyes. “We know you like the girl and that she likes you. No harm done.”  
“No harm done – until someone outside of this little group finds out,” I mutter darkly.  
Jesper’s eyes lower to my cane, his smirk fading into a thoughtful frown. It’s as if he’s only realizing that what I feel for Inej might eventually destroy either or both of us. He pulls my cane away from him, and says seriously, “You’re worried he’ll harm her?”  
“I know he’ll try,” I say, turning to keep walking down the stairs. Jesper follows me, adjusting his hat. “I know it’s only a matter of time.”  
The words make me nauseous by themselves, and the images as well as the possibilities that they bring…  
Elias, despite everything, is still a smart man. And smart rarely means intelligent, but there is no doubt in my mind that at this point in time, he’s trying to see which parts of me are tender to make his move. Ketterdam raised him. The world he knows is the same one I came to when my brother died, and Elias knows his way around. I know the risks of underestimating him and his ambition. Just as much as I know that him underestimating me equals Elias digging his own grave.  
He might’ve been raised in this city, learning its monstrous, greedy language. But I-  
I became Ketterdam.  
“There’s something else,” Jesper says.  
We wait until we’re out of the Slat, our hats low over our eyes as we walk the echoing pathway, our hard soles on the wet cobbled streets the only sound surrounding us. And then Jesper says, “Dobber says Elias has been tenser lately, like he’s nervous. Last night when Dobber went to give him a tip about us, Elias flipped and pushed him to the floor. Dobber thought he’d kill him right there, for no reason at all. He told me about the deal that Elias made with the Black Tips-”  
“We already know about the deal.” We turn a corner, and I try to shove the impatience off my tone. “Dobber came to me after I woke up from the shooting.”  
“Jeez, Kaz, let a man finish,” Jesper gestures to me. “But Dobber also told me yesterday, when you were in there getting lovey dovey with your brown-eyed sweetheart-“  
“Get it over with,” I snarl at him, turning my burning face away and out of his sight. I bury the memory of her touch in the back of my mind. Just for now.  
Jesper gives me a half smile as he continues, “He told me the deal’s off, apparently. Elias came from talking to Samson, and the new leader of the Tips ain’t really happy with the attack on the Crow Club. The Black Tips want the Dime Lions quiet, but instead they’re out here making a fuss about us instead.”  
“How does Dobber know this?”  
“Says he overheard two Tips talking about it after that day in the harbour. They were both pissed drunk at some tavern near the Menagerie. Dobber followed them both home.” A small pause, before we turn another corner. Then Jesper continues, “Told you Dobber was a good spy.”  
“We’ll see,” I say to him.  
Jesper is silent, though I know it’s not going to last. He’s curious, I can sense that. But I have no explanations to give him. Not even when he asks:  
“Have you told her?”  
And so silence is what he gets.  
“Damn, Kaz – Inej needs to know-“  
“I will be the judge of that,” I growl at him, not being able to contain the burn in my veins.   
“You’ll be the judge? Kaz, if it concerns her, then-”  
I pull him into a corner, my fingers wrapped tight around his jacket. Jesper manages to roll his eyes as I shake him.  
“You listen to me, Jesper, and you listen well,” I begin, teeth clenched. “I will murder him before he can touch her.”  
“You might not be fast enough,” Jesper frowns at me. “We might not be fast enough. If you’re wrong, and if Elias has another plan-“  
“I’m not wrong.”  
“Accept the gods-damned possibility that you might be or risk losing her, Kaz.”  
The words make my hands shake, and not from anger. Not from anything except livid fear. Real fear, the kind that I had not felt for a very long time. Cold waters type of fear.  
Jesper knows the words hit home, and as much as I try to keep a straight face I know he sees it this close. I know he knows I’m terrified, and that’s where he wants me to be. I know that’s where my mindset should be. I know. I know I should tell her. I know I should-  
I know. I know. I know.  
I can’t.  
“You did my head in when I asked Wylan for those explosives,” I grit out.  
“The explosives you didn’t use,” Jesper remarks.  
My spine straightens. “I’m nothing if not cautious, Jesper.” My eyes narrow, my fingers clench on the fabric of his jacket to keep my hands from shaking. “You asked me not to involve him. You want him out of this as much as I want Inej out of this. How is it that you think what I’m doing is wrong?”  
Jesper shakes me off, pushing past me with the words, “I’m not the one lying to her.”  
“Lying and omitting the truth are too different things,” I tell him, staring at the wall. “You know that more than anybody else.”  
He doesn’t respond to the jab, and simply walks away. Tasting something bitter in my mouth, I follow him, and let the silence drown out the sirens in my mind.  
Tell her, he says. That’s because Jesper wasn’t there to look into her eyes when my lips touched hers. He was not the one that felt the trembling of her body, or the quiet tears that she wiped away when she thought I was asleep. He was not the one that saw the petrifying fear in her inch of her face when I touched her.  
I will not – I cannot – put her through that. Not again.  
When we reach the crow club, Jesper and I watch over the walls being painted back the same dark blue. Near the bar, the counters and walls are still dotted in bullet holes, and the blood stained the wooden floors a dark red colour, almost resembling black. Workers pace in and out of the building, and I recognize each face. Each one handpicked by me.   
Jesper’s eyes are glued to those bullet holes, and palms pass over the hilt of his pistols, as if he needs the their comfort after the sight in front of him.  
“He’s really not playing around.”  
“This is child’s play,” I tell him. “This is a playground for him.”  
“We need to show him it’s a battlefield,” Jesper says.  
“Boss.”  
I turn, my eyes glued to the small box one of the painters bring to me. It’s brand new and prepped with a pretty little red bow on top, perfectly wrapped. It’s Elias’ sense of humour.  
“This was here this morning,” the man tells me. “It is addressed to you.”  
“Take it upstairs to the office.”  
“Yes, sir.”  
Jesper snaps his tongue, watching the man leave for the stairs. “D’you think the Lions have an explosions master?”  
“That box doesn’t contain a bomb,” I say.  
“What do you think it is?”  
“Get Pim in here.”  
“Kaz-“  
I’m already walking away.  
I can feel him debating choking me, but in then there’s simply a sigh and the sound of his boots as Jesper storms out of the club. I’m already prepared for what I’ll find when I reach my office at the top of the stairs.  
The box sits neatly in the centre of the desk looking like a gift worth for a wedding. I rip it to shreds, throw the bow to the floor.  
My throat goes dry.  
A piece of jewellery and a note. That’s all there is.  
I pick the bracelet with my indicator – a thin, gold string, simple and yet intricate, with patterns that flow all around, that wrap and entwine, of roses and their spikes, of bushes and leaves. Hand-drawn, while the gold is still liquid. I know it’s a rare piece of jewellery. I know it’s not Kerch made. I recognize the Suli technique.  
I drop the bracelet into the box, pick up the note. I feel all fire in my veins at the words.  
Your move.  
***  
PART THREE  
I only have enough time to slip the note into the back pocket of my trousers when she climbs through the window. The box and the bracelet are hidden from her view, as if they had never existed.  
Even as I watch her fumble with the lock on the window, I marvel at the silence stillness of her. At the quickness of her fingers. Seconds later, she’s in, dripping on the wooden floor.  
And smiles.  
It’s almost enough for me to forget. Almost.  
Inej knows she could’ve simply walked through the door of the Crow Club and marched up the stairs to see me. But I understand how old habits can die hard.  
She stares at me as if she’s accusing me of something, though the smile doesn’t leave her face. Inej wipes at her wet cheeks with her wet sleeve, pulling away wild strands of hair that cling to her skin. All of a sudden, I’m reminded of how her skin tastes. How it feels to press my lips against hers, to have her cheek resting against my chest. The soft sounds she makes when she calls my name in her sleep.  
I’m all too aware.  
I stay sitting on the desk chair, watching her as she’s watching me. I hide everything behind a mask with a simple tilt of my brow, a quirk of my lip, and uselessly pray to saints I don’t believe in that she doesn’t find in my eyes any traces of remaining anger. Of fear.  
When she stays silent, waiting for me to stay something, I tell her slowly, “You’re dripping wet.”  
Her chin raises. “It’s raining. Have you looked out your window today?”  
I do, as if absent-mindedly. “I could’ve sworn it was as bright as a summer day just two minutes ago.”  
“Did you curse the weather, Kaz?”  
“I cursed you, for stealing the blankets all night long.”  
Inej looks stunned for a few seconds, as if she hadn’t expected me to mention last night, or any previous nights that we had. Flirtation doesn’t come naturally to me, but it effectively distracts her.  
Her composure comes back quickly, and Inej’s smile only grows. It literally pains me. It’s a physical ache everytime she looks at me like that, and everytime I allow myself to adore her for it.  
“Did I leave you out in the cold, is that it?” She mocks.  
“Proud of yourself?”  
“Yes,” Inej says, contouring the desk to come closer. My breath hitches, my body tenses, as she rests her hip on the side of the desk, her arms crossed, her lips wet, her eyes bright. “It serves you right for leaving me cold this morning.”  
She’s waiting for an explanation.  
Softly, I tell her “I didn’t want to wake you.”  
Inej’s hand rests atop the desk, where the box had been. Soft eyes turn to look up at me through wet lashes, and the need for me to reach out and wipe the raindrop off the corner of her mouth is so strong I have to close my hand into a fist. She notices that, too.  
“Kaz,” she says, equally gentle.  
I think I might be dying when Inej licks her lips. She does it again, as if thinking the words through first, before she says, “Last night-”  
“I don’t need to know,” I tell her, because I mean it. “You don’t need to explain.”  
“I want to,” she says, tentatively. “I wasn’t…in the right state of mind.”  
I’d known that much – I’d known what she’d seen that night, how close she’d been to the Menagerie, to Haleen. I understand how, despite her willingness to be close to me, her mind tricked her into thinking I was going to harm her, for those few seconds, when my lips touched hers. But I could only guess the extent of her pain, and I would not dare to pretend to know it.  
“I…” she scoffs a laugh, scratching at her chin. A nervous tick. “I don’t want you to be afraid to touch me.”  
“I’m not,” I lie through my teeth.  
“Because I want you to,” she says. “To touch me, I mean.”  
A blunt confession, and it takes us both by surprise. She turns her eyes to the desk momentarily, wiping a speck of invisible dust, before turning to look at me again.  
“Say the word, Inej,” I tell her, throat dry once more, and for a completely different reason. “Tell me to touch you, tell me to leave. I will obey each time. No questions asked.”  
“Thank you,” she murmurs.  
I shake my head. And we need no more words.  
The silence that envelops us is always soothing, never tense, even if the air is filled with her unanswered questions. I watch her as her gaze turns towards the window, tracing the rain-filled skies that surround us. I watch the full cheeks and the gentle curve of her lips, the strands of hair that curl around her face. The thoughtful eyes turn to me once more, asking further questions.  
I incline my head to the side – a silent request, and a way to test her waters. Giving her the space to step away if she wants to, I barely move, though my arms rest on each arm of the chair, waiting for her response, signifying what I want.  
Inej smiles slightly. As she moves, I try to pretend that I don’t have to hold my breath to calm myself down, that this simple thing doesn’t take a mutual effort. I pretend that our minds aren’t plagued with things we cannot forget and just-  
Let myself crave her.  
She sits sideways on my lap, laps dangling, leaning her side against my chest.  
I wrap my arms around her, and let her warmth seep through me, let my chin rest against her clothed shoulder. Slowly, I feel her body relax against mine, and I attempt to do the same.  
“You’re freezing,” I say, voice hoarse, as I wrap my jacket around her shoulders.  
When she puts it on, the sleeves hide her hands, and it fits her like a dress. My heart lightens when she attempts to wrap it tighter around herself, but finds way too much fabric to work with.  
“I’ll get it all wet.”  
“It’s fine,” I tell her.  
“Are you alright?” She asks me, so close.  
I nod, only briefly. “Are you?”  
She nods back, breathing slowly, easily. And then, like she really does want to break me into pieces, Inej rests her head on my shoulder. My eyes fall shut, my body responds on its own – wrapping my arms around her, I keep her close, pressed up against me. I’m marvelled at the fact that her breath on my neck makes me feel more alive than I ever felt.  
“Why did you need Jesper?” She asks softly.  
Because she knows that if Jesper wasn’t at the Slat, he’d be with me.  
I take her bare hand in my gloved one, my thumb trailing over her knuckles. I can almost feel her heart jumping out of her chest. But she stays, and entwines her fingers with mine. “I thought we’d run into trouble when we came here.”  
“You know how to use a gun.”  
“One gun is useless if there are more.”  
“Did you think Elias would ambush you at your own club?” Inej says, her tone calming. “He’s not that stupid. He knows you have this place safe.”  
“I had this place safe before and he still managed to kill two of my men.”  
Inej’s face grows solemn. “He won’t try again. Not when he’s expecting you to return the favour.” She looks at me then, and after a short pause she says, “Which I guess you already did.”  
“Yes,” I tell her.  
Inej purses her lips. “You’re not going to tell me?”  
“I can,” I say, pressing her closer to me. “If you so insist. Or-”  
She pulls her hand away from mine, and crosses her arms. “I insist.”  
“Or,” I continue. “You can leave it to me.”  
She frowns at me. “Kaz.”  
My chin rests on her shoulder once more, willing her to let it be, willing this moment to last.  
But she says, “Just because we’re…” And stops, her lips parted, her eyes cast down.  
I smile despite myself, feeling giddy in teasing her like this. “We’re what?”  
Inej pushes herself away to look at me, dark brows furrowed. I try to find it in myself to feel remorse about what I’m doing, but as her eyes search mine I can’t find the least bit of conscience in me. I can’t stay away from her, and because of that I can’t protect her. So all that I have left is this.  
“Just because things have changed doesn’t mean I’m not the same person,” she says very clearly. “You want to protect me, Kaz – but I want to protect you in return. I will not let you do this alone.”  
“You’re wetting my trousers. You should change clothes.”  
“I will stab you as a warning, Kaz Brekker,” she says. “Stop avoiding me.”  
“I’m not.”  
“Despicable liar,” she accuses.  
“And I thought that was part the reason why I charmed you so.”  
Inej shakes her head, fighting the smile that creeps into her face. “Kaz,” she says softly. “Don’t leave me out of this. I know it’s instinctive for you. To push me away, to want to do things by yourself. But you’re not on your own, Kaz. This is my fight too.”  
Silence dawns upon us, and the only sound in the room is her breathing and the soft patting of the rain outside. The streets are empty, and the world seems empty save for us.   
“Why do you refuse to let me keep you safe, Wraith?” I murmur, grabbing her hand again. Her brown skin against the leather feels wrong, too good and pure against the darkness, but I’m selfish enough to keep holding on.  
Inej gives me a half smile as a response, leaning in. She touches her lips to my clothed shoulder, but I can still feel the contour of her mouth through the thin shirt, and the consequence is my brain conjuring every type of scenario in which she’s tracing my bare skin, leaving kisses in places she has not yet ventured to – my throat, my neck, the shell of my ear-  
She asks me, in a mere whisper, “When will you allow me to protect you?” And it sounds as if she’s asking me something else.  
“You realize,” I say to her, “that every moment spent with me might mean your death?”  
“Must you always be so arrogant?” She asks in return, squeezing my fingers. “I would like to think that I made a reputation for myself, too. If a bullet finds its way to my heart, then it will be on me, Kaz. Certainly not on you.”  
I frown at her. “It’s not funny, Inej.”  
She smiles still. “You’re treating us like we’re a ticking time bomb, Kaz.” Gently, so gently, her hand rests on my cheek. My lips part on their own, my brain snaps in two, but I can bear it. I want her touch more than I want air to breathe. “I don’t want to part with you just yet.”  
My hand reaches out and my fingers touch the small curl at her temple, pushing it out of her face. I try to be as gentle as I possibly can, but my hands have started to shake and I don’t know how to find my balance anymore.  
The words that leave my mouth are difficult, but they are the undeniable truth. What she needs to know. “I’ll run to my maker before I put you in danger again, Inej.”  
Inej shakes her head slowly, and her eyes turn unbearably sad. Her forehead touches mine, and I feel as if I might crumble.  
She says, “Share the burden with me, Kaz. Let me help.”  
Let me help you.  
Her arms wrap around me, pulling me close, and my lips are buried on her neck. I breathe her in, close my eyes, and imagine a world where this is all I have ever known and will ever know.  
I pretend I don’t feel the ache deep within as I say, “Alright. Alright.”  
She holds me tighter.  
And I find myself thinking about the universe and its infinity, and how my love for her surpasses even that.  
***  
PART FOUR  
At night, she touches her forehead to mine.  
She shifts slightly, as she always does when she sleeps, and our noses end up touching, too. Her breath fans over my lips as she sighs a pleasant, happy sigh. Her fingers twist in my night shirt. My cheek is still tingling with the phantom feel of her lips.  
If I had known years before that my nights would be spent with her lying next to me, one leg wrapped around my waist and her heart against mine, I would’ve thought it a simple dream and nothing more. If I had seen myself and her watching our bare hands touch and fingers entwine, I would’ve not believed it. And yet I fall asleep with the memory of her smile, with the weight of her atop of me.  
A life of this.  
A life of this – is why I cake my hands with blood.  
***  
PART FIVE  
I leave her with her face buried in my pillow, smiling. I can’t help but near her before I go to adjust the covers around her, shielding her from the cold. Inej sighs softly once more, her lips parted. She will not wake until morning – that much I’m sure.  
I love you, I need to whisper. Infinitely.  
She tucks her arm under the pillow, pulling it close. I’ve felt her do it to me several times before.   
I wipe the smile off my face.  
And then, silently as a ghost, I brave the city. Inside me, the monster growls. The workers at the club have given me a description, and I know exactly who to find.  
When the moon is high in the sky, Dirtyhands shows his face.  
***  
PART SIX  
The messenger gives his last breath with the hilt of my knife buried deep in his guts.   
The last sound is a pained one, and I relish in it.  
For the pain they have caused her.  
For daring to threaten her.  
I relish every ray of light slowly leaving his eyes, and only when there is only emptiness do I remove the knife, and unwrap the fingers around the man’s throat. The empty body is dragged by my hand the rest of the way and dropped unceremoniously at the Dime Lion’s doorstep.  
There is only one last touch to add.  
I wipe the dried blood on my chin with my sleeve, ignoring the pain in my right leg that makes me limp. I don’t look back as I walk away.  
The messenger is left with two scarlet words written on his forehead that glint in the moonlight.  
Your move.  
There is nobody here. The streets are empty save for me and my ghosts. And yet-  
And yet I still hear it.  
I hear the words echoed in the dark corners and empty streets.  
The Wraith’s back.  
Dirtyhands has his spider on his lap again.  
I repeat them to myself. Swallow down the anger that makes me livid, that makes me reckless. I swallow the words right down along with the need to draw more blood. Ketterdam’s streets are already flowing with it.  
I wash my gloves, leave the water red. When dawn arrives, I make a move. Inej is going to be waking now, and realize that I have left her side. She will come to find me.   
I make sure I leave no trace of last night’s events for her to find.  
When I take the streets again, the sun rising in the red skies, the whispers change. I put my gloves back on. I let the words guide me.  
Did you hear?  
Did you see the blood?  
Dirtyhands is back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Oh, yikes, Kaz. What are you up to? 
> 
> Tell me your thoughts on this chapter, loves! Hopefully I’ll get the next one posted sooner than the last <3 Thank you for reading! Hope you’re having the loveliest week! xx


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